


The Fairy of Shalott

by MarInk



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M, rated for language, ye olde bookshop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarInk/pseuds/MarInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colin works in a bookstore and harbours a dream. An unusual customer comes in one day, and before Colin knows it his neatly organized life goes downhill. Or, maybe, uphill, even if there is no such phrase. He can’t really decide which one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fairy of Shalott

**Author's Note:**

> I’m endlessly grateful to my beta and cheerleader-reader oomnydevvotchka. All the mistakes, blunders, and errors you might find in the text are solely my fault.  
> Also, this was an entry for a Merlin RPF Big Bang, so check out the amazing and cute illustrations by helva2260! Here: http://helva2260.livejournal.com/10647.html

_I'm in a wide open space, I'm standing_  
I'm all alone and staring into space  
It's always quiet thru' my ceiling  
The roof comes in and crashes in a daze

_I'm in a wide open space, it's freezing_  
You'll never get to heaven with a smile on your face from me  
I'm in a wide open space, I'm staring  
There's something quite bizarre I cannot see 

_I'm on the top of a hill, I'm lonely_  
There's someone here to shout to miles away  
I could be back in my house, for I care  
They do not hear me, it's the same old case 

_I'm in a wide open space, it's freezing_  
You'll never get to heaven with a smile on your face from me  
I'm in a wide open space, I'm staring  
There's something quite bizarre I cannot see  
“Wide Open Space”, Mansun.

Colin knows all sorts of customers that there are. 

He knows the thoughtful type with glasses and shadows under their eyes from reading late, the offhand glamorous type looking for the new bestseller which has just become a motion picture, the quiet type looking through cheap paperbacks for something other the TV to distract themselves before they fall asleep in the evening, the student type with rumpled lists of textbooks in their pockets, the pennyless type reading in the corner for hours before they get shown out by a shop assistant who has lost their patience and is afraid that the book will look read and worn afterwards. He is never the one to lose his patience – he likes people reading, likes watching their expressions flicker and their fingers turn the pages deftly. It calms his rather fretted nerves somehow.

 _Shalott_ is small but bright and cosy and the books are strewn all over the place, across the shelves, the floor, the chairs and windowsills and coffee tables. Colin smiles a lot as he is asked many times a day whether they have this or that book and he doesn’t know and has to go ask Richard.

Technically, Richard has retired. Colin is unsure as to how old Richard actually is but he knows that Richard had been an actor for the most part of his life and a damn good one for that matter but then grew tired of the hectic filming schedules and bought his favourite bookstore. Apparently, running a bookstore is tiresome too so there are Colin and Helen and the Tury twins who all work in shifts and Richard can spend his fays the way he likes. Mostly he prefers to drink tea in the backroom and read something and occasionally come to help Colin because smiles are well and good and, some say, cute to the point of approximately two hundred and forty kittenwatts but they can’t replace the book requested. Sadly.

Also, they won’t get him what he wants most but he can live with that. He already knows how.

One can’t say that this tiny bookstore is an example of thriving business though they get by with what they earn. However, Colin has quite a lot of time when he isn’t busy and he spends those hours either reading, exploring the shelves to remember what is where or trying to compile a database of everything they have so that he wouldn’t have to memorize each single book. This doesn’t go that well because Colin is not all that brilliant with computers and even if he were the old computer they own seems to be under the impression that it is retired as well and doesn’t work more often than not. Maybe it shuts down every fifteen minutes or so just to irritate the hell out of Colin, he isn’t sure.

That’s what Colin’s doing when a new customer walks through the door.

Ah, Colin thinks. The glamorous type: blond, fit, impeccably handsome and surely knowing it, with his white trainers spotless which most probably means he doesn’t walk around like mere mortals do but uses his undoubtedly shiny car. He checks quickly in his mind if they have any copies of bestsellers left. If the guy looks for a gift for his girlfriend, they are sure to find some Stephenie Meyer in the far right corner, two or three different novels. If he wants something for his parents, something stern and non-fiction like Zakaria’s _Post-American World_ will do for his father – probably some businessman or a back-bench politician; and for his mother – _The Love Dare_ which has just appeared in paperback yesterday and looks elegant enough still being a sappy love story, or, maybe, Sophie Kinsella’s _Remember Me?_ which has been flying out of the store since February the minute they put a new pile on the floor. If, by any chance, the guy isn’t just a football team captain and a regular of every posh night club in the city but is into family business or law, that new Grisham shall fit him fine, or one of those numerous economics things that Colin privately finds utterly boring like Soros’s _The New Paradigm for Financial Markets_. On the off chance, the guy might be inclined to read himself and looking for King’s latest, _Duma Key_ , or even _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ , but Colin wouldn’t bet his life on it.

The guy, the guy’s life, parents, girlfriend, future career, tastes and habits all sized up neatly in Colin’s head, Colin looks at the guy pointedly from behind the till and asks:

“How can I help you?”

He remembers to smile but he’s careful not to let out anything more then five or seven kittenwatts. The glamorous type doesn’t care much for sincerity of shop assistants anyway.

The guy turns to Colin and smiles sheepishly, tilting his head to the side a little bit like a child asking an adult for a favour. He looks a tad lost among all uneven varicolourous piles and this helpless and hopeful expression doesn’t fit into Colin’s opinion of the guy so much that it’s almost painful to see.

“Hi,” the guy says sounding abashed and in awe. “This place… um… it’s a maze. I’m, well, I’m looking for a book.”

“Indeed you are,” says Colin, his face a serious polite mask. “Which book, exactly, would you like to find? We have plenty, fortunately.”

This is kind of a moment of truth, and Colin waits for the answer with a trepidation of sorts. This unusual guy is the most exciting thing to happen to him today, he can afford that much of emotion.

“I thought you might have a copy of Isherwood’s _A Single Man_ ,” the guy says. “I can’t find one anywhere, the best I managed to dig up is his autobiography and that creepy Frankenstein story. So if you don’t have one, I’ll have to hope that Amazon or E-bay have it but I don’t really like online-shopping?..”

He finishes his little speech as if he confesses some awful childish sin like stealing sweets from the kitchen before dinner and looks at Colin – his, it seems, partner in crime here – expectantly. This is the cue for Colin to chime in as a true professional and say “yes, we happen to have one, it’s old and second-hand but pretty decent-looking, so if you’ll be so kind as to wait a minute while I find the ladder and take it from the upper shelf on your left?” But Colin just sits there and looks at the guy with his eyes wide open ‘cause the guy isn’t supposed to be but he is. He can’t even say if he’s more disappointed that his classifying skills have failed completely or stunned by the idea.

“Ah…” Colin says. “Yeah, sure, we have it, I saw it three days ago on that shelf up there, so, sure, we do. What do you need it for, by the way?”

The guy shrugs.

“I was told it’s a good read,” he smiles, widely and cheerfully this time, and there are dimples on his cheeks. Colin would estimate each of them as at least fifty kittenwatts. “But the person who said that took the book from their university library and I don’t have access to that one, and I thought, why the hell not buy it.”

“So you like reading, then?” Colin gets up not looking away from the guy and thus bumping into the corner of the counter. It hurts but he suffers through the results of his own idiocy silently.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to laugh at me for that, too!” The guy looks very dramatically hurt and long-suffering. “My teammates do, but you’re working with books, how can you?”

“I’m not laughing,” Colin interrupts before the guy starts performing some scene of inconsolable grief right in the middle of the store just for the sake of entertainment at Colin’s expense. “I was just… surprised.”

“Why?”

“You don’t seem the type,” Colin mutters hoping that his voice is muffled enough as he is on the highest step on the ladder now and is bent among the piles on the shelf in a weird worm-like totally spineless way.

“If you fall down,” says the guy solemnly, and Colin can swear he feels the guy’s intense eyes on his backside and legs, “I’ll catch you. But it’s too high so we’ll end up with our legs broken. Which would you prefer to break, the right or the left one? We would be lying in a hospital all symmetrical and I’d read you _A Single Man_ out loud.”

“I prefer not to break either of them.” Colin entangles himself from the books with the dusty copy of _A Single Man_ in hand. “And who says one of us isn’t going to break his neck? What would you suggest if this happened?”

“I’d cry over your grave clutching the book for which you gave your life, I think,” the guy laughs throwing his head back, obviously pleased with the conversation, but Colin doesn’t join him.

“So you just assume it’d be me who broke his neck? Why not you?” he clicks the buttons to print the check and writes down the author and the title in the logbook.

“Yours just looks a lot more fragile than mine,” the guy shrugs guiltily. “Sorry, mate, I really didn’t want you to die.”

If Colin continues this conversation for a second more, his brain’s likely to explode and cover everything around him in blood, flesh and gore. He pushes the book into the brown paper bag with a pale logo of _Shalott_ printed on it and drops it into the guy’s hands.

“Thank you for having chosen our store, have a nice day!” He singsongs flopping down onto his chair and staring at the screen very intently.

When the guy says “goodbye” sounding a bit wounded and leaves, Colin understands that the computer has shut down again at some point and the screen is dark and empty and every piece of data he managed to feed the computer with today hasn’t been saved.

* * *

Richard leaves at five, as usual, looking content with his working day spend with Proust and Heinlein. Colin’s shift is till eight and he closes the store on his own. The keys are heavy in his fingers and he knows it means he’s tired with a medium-sized tiredness. When he takes an afternoon off – never explaining what he needs it for but getting one anyway because Richard is the nicest boss this side of Atlantic – he leaves _Shalott_ still full of cheery, purely physical taut strength. The bone-deep exhaustion comes only before holidays like Christmas when customers are literally swarming all day long. Today was just an ordinary day.

Colin walks down the street to a small coffee shop which works till midnight and orders his usual – double espresso with whipped soy cream and triple sugar and marble syrup. Katie the barista smiles handing the cup over to him – she thinks he’s got a sweet tooth the size of Eiffel tower. They like to chat and they have bonded a bit both being Irish and lonely in London and having a sarcastic quirky sense of humor but he never tells her that he orders this because it’s his dinner. He can’t afford much with his wages and he doesn’t need much so he fools his body successfully managing to fall asleep in the evening before it recovers from all the sugar and demands some proper food. 

Besides, he _has_ a bit of a sweet tooth and after a long shift a puffy cloud of syrupy whipped soy cream is something that can convince one that the world is a nice place no matter what.

He turns around sipping his still too hot coffee and in the far corner he sees someone he didn’t expect to see. The blond hair of the not-falling-under-any-type-guy is shining under the lamplight and there’s a dry smudge of something jam-like on his upper lip. Colin watches the guy for half a minute staying unnoticed.

The guy is reading, evidently fascinated by the story. He turns the pages quite quickly, very carefully, and never looks around. His back looks stiff – if he’s been sitting here since he left the shop then Colin can’t blame the guy’s spine for rebelling even though the guy ignores it efficiently.

“Has he been here for long?” Colin asks.

“For hours,” Katie says leaning on the till beside Colin. The shop is empty for the moment and she uses an opportunity to relax. “He’s been reading since late afternoon. He must be rich, I think, otherwise he’s ruined after how much coffee and muffins he’s bought today.”

“Maybe he just fancies you but he’s too shy to approach?” Colin gathers some cream on the end of his straw and eats it like that, slippery and clumsy. It feels good.

“He fancies the book,” Katie laughs. “He has eyes only for it, trust me. I wonder what it is that made him glue his pretty arse to the chair like that.”

“It’s Isherwood,” Colin says not objecting the pretty arse notion as, impartially, it is just as nauseatingly pretty as everything else about the guy. “ _A Single Man_. I sold it to him today.”

“Isherwood?” Katie repeats. “Haven’t read anything of his but it sounds pretty solemn. Is he a literature student?”

“Who, Isherwood?” Colin chuckles into his coffee and gets punished for that when a considerable portion of the cream lands on his nose and cheeks.

Katie makes an attempt at revenge trying to slap him with a towel but Colin is swift enough to duck in time. They laugh together and something tight unravels in Colin’s chest a little bit.

The sound of laughter tears the guy away from his book: he looks up, confused, and precisely half a second passes before the guy recognizes Colin and smiles so happily as if he’s met his best friend after several months apart.

His smile is broad and boyish, and two or three of his white teeth are a little crooked; it makes his face with its perfectly balanced features so alive and joyous and unrestrained that Colin can’t help but smiles in return feeling the full power of a couple of hundreds kittenwatts beaming outwards.

“Hi,” the guy says. The book is forgotten; chilly evening wind from the window which is slightly ajar flips the pages back and forth but the guy doesn’t register that. “What’s your name? I never asked.”

“Do you know the names of everyone you buy something from? You must have a memory worthy of the Rain Man,” Colin says.

“No,” the guy is embarrassed and no one with shoulders so broad must be able to look so adorable because adorable is not something that guys with broad shoulders and a posh Eton-like accent do. “But you are weird so I remembered you. I’m Bradley, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Colin since his mother taught him to be polite under any circumstances and when he doesn’t know what to do or say – like right now – politeness saves the day.

The guy – Bradley – watches him waiting for something. Oh, yeah. He forgot to introduce himself.

“Colin,” he says squeezing his cooling cup tighter. Suddenly he just wishes to be out of here and halfway home where he’d be if it weren’t for stupid Bradley with his stupid habit of telling people that they are weird and smiling at them like they are special and precious when in fact they are not.

He might be starting to hate Bradley a little bit, just for that thought of his own.

“You’re Irish, right?” Bradley asks still sitting and looking at Colin, and Colin is still standing and holding the cup, and Katie is watching them with acute interest.

It’s all rather stupid in a quite ordinary non-adorable senseless stupid way. Colin’s fingers hurt from the cup that’s too hot – has Katie put boiling water inside?.. – and his ears and nose, on the contrary, are numb from cold. It’s dark outside, and Colin’d better make it home soon – he has a hard day tomorrow and a lot of book dust in his hair right now.

“Yes, I am,” he says. He turns to Katie and bids her goodbye, turns back to Bradley and nods hastily before rushing out of the coffeshop.

That’s how one does it, Colin thinks. Coffee drops on his lips seem to be turning into ice in the chill. That’s how one just walks away from all phenomena that throw you off balance – and Colin values his balance over many things.

* * *

First thing Colin does coming home is checking his e-mail. He feels like a spider sitting in the centre of his newly created web and waiting for the delicious meaty flies of information to come to him. He gets lots of letters most of which are rubbish and spam but about thirty per cent deserve deeper consideration. Day by day nothing comes out of it in the end but Colin doesn’t despair because that’s the main thing in his life now and possibly for years to come and he can afford waiting.

He makes a plan for tomorrow and writes out the addresses and some other details so as not to make a fool of himself due to a misunderstanding. Following the plan, he’s gotta get up at six tomorrow, earlier than he gets up for work, but tomorrow is Helen’s shift in the morning and he has only to come at two which is fine.

Colin drifts into sleep watching the shadows dance on the ceiling. He waits for them to start making sense and resembling pictures or letters and when it happens he knows that it’s the first dream of this night starting. He thinks that if they ever start making sense while he’s awake it wouldn’t mean anything good for him but evening after evening they behave like good shadows should.

He wishes them goodnight before slipping entirely into a long dream full of tiring activities like climbing the mountains and drowning in some lakes.

* * *

Helen adores long dresses with heavy belts and the dresses adore her. Colin watches Helen fidget with the sleeve of her new creamy silky dress while talking to Santiago and wonders just how much more time it will take for Santiago to stop buying random thrillers, love stories and Chinese-Spanish dictionaries and to ask Helen out. Santiago is a promising actor, and though so far his most prominent role on TV was that of a playboy Ben in a drama show – and the gist of his part was accidental fishing a girl’s knickers out of his pocket and pretending he didn’t know how it got there – Santiago is still really good. He is also handsome like hell and Colin likes the way he and Helen look beside each other.

“Oh, hello, Colin,” Helen ruffles his hair and he lets her. It’s in disarray anyway. “A pretty boy came this morning to see you.”

“A pretty boy?” Colin echoes shrugging off his jacket.

“Yes,” Helen tosses the till keys to him and he catches without looking beacause he’s used to her doing that. The first time she left him with a key-shaped shiner but that didn’t stop her so he had to learn to survive, somehow. “He promised to come by this afternoon again.”

“Was he blond, fit and with an idiotic smile?” Colin asks in a bored voice knowing the answer even before Helen claps her hands in unexplicable glee and confirms his suspicions.

He buzies himself with kicking away the bookpiles that don’t let him move his chair a bit further from the till and stretch his legs. Helen puts her coat on, and there’s such tentative hope on Santiago’s face that Colin catches himself thinking that she’s either blind like a bat – which she is not – or she doesn’t want to go out with Santiago but doesn’t want to tell him or doesn’t know how.

She takes a look at her watch and exclaims eagerly:

“It’s half past two already! Damn it, I’m terribly late. Colin, Santiago, see you later!” Colin mouthes the words along silently, they are too predictable to resist.

Santiago sees him doing it, though, and he looks so sad when he catches up on what’s going on that Colin feels now like a maniac. A regular puppy-kicker who devotes his rare hours free from puppies to abusing babies and taking their ice-cream from them cackling ominously in the meanwhile.

“I’m sorry,” Colin says although he didn’t lead Santiago on and definitely didn’t encourage him to have a crush on Helen. He, however, is the one to take on the weight of Santiago’s broken heart because he’s a sympathetic miserable git like this. “She just… doesn’t really like anyone. She’s only ever loved _Shalott_.”

Santiago nods and heads off after awkward goodbyes.

This is not good, Colin thinks. He’ll have to put all those spare Spanish-Chinese dictionaries into the database now, and he sort of hoped that Santiago would eventually buy the whole stock.

* * *

Bradley appears on the doorstep fifteen minutes before Colin has to close the shop. It’s raining outside and Bradley doesn’t have an umbrella with him and he’s soaked through, his hair dark and damp on his forehead, his clothes soggy and his trainers squelching.

“You’ll catch a cold,” Colin says.

Bradley sneezes and grins at Colin.

“Hello to you too, you grumpy Irish fairy.”

“Fairy?” Colin is unsure how to interpret that.

“Well, a leprechaun would be even more authentic but you’re too tall to be one and it’s not like you’re keeping any gold anywhere, under the rainbow or wherever,” Bradley explains not really making his words any clearer. “Unless you are a leprechaun in a clever disguise sneaking around the mortal world for your own leprechaunish reasons, in which case I apologize for the assumption.”

Colin shakes his head, but Bradley’s nonsensical bubbling seems to have stuck itself to his brain and it messes with him quite thoroughly.

“Are you thirsty?” Bradley asks.

“What? Why do you ask?”

“I’d ask you out for a drink to chat instead of hanging out here – seriously, this place is creepy, I’m truly afraid that the minute the door isn’t in my sight I’ll get lost inside this bookmaze – but, well, I don’t drink anything stronger than tea,” Bradley looks sheepish again. “So, well, when no alcohol is meant, people don’t say ‘drink’, do they? How does one ask another to have tea or mineral water together?”

“I’m a vegetarian,” Colin says. This seems somehow more fitting than a reply along the lines of “are you out of your bloody mind” or “wait a minute, I’ll check with all the loonie bins in London in case one of them has lost a patient whose description matches yours recently”.

“You are?” Bradley takes Colin’s frame in and nods. “That explains the lack of meat on your bones. I think, though, you won’t start preaching over a steak if I want to eat one, will you?”

Colin isn’t narrow-minded. He knows that human interaction doesn’t fit the schemes he makes up in his mind, no matter how elaborate they are. But he’s convinced that the bloody thing should at least correspond to some kind of common sense or inner logic, and without it he feels like he loses the steady ground under his feet. He’s actually getting sea-sick standing in a bookstore in the outskirts of London.

“Look, why don’t you just go away?” Colin suggests. Politeness, it should be the salvation. “I don’t even want to know what you want from me. Just go home, dry your hair, have a cup of your blasted tea and forget that I exist altogether.”

It is the wrong thing to say and not only because it wasn’t really polite in the way it was worded. The meaning of it as it hits Bradley makes Colin’s insides go stiff because he isn’t ready to see another pair of wounded puppy eyes today. He’s already seen his monthly quota this afternoon, why must he be subjected to it again?

“I…” Bradley starts and stops to think for a second. “You…”

He sneezes again, loudly. Colin imagines tiny angry germs falling from their warm wet homes in Bradley’s nose and mouth onto the ground. The germs are wearing pyjamas and are showing their pointy teeth in nasty snarls.

Colin goes to the backroom without a word. Bradley trails after him, either having forgotten his bookstore-maze-phobia or fighting it for the sake of curiosity and whatever it is that keeps Bradley ticking – Colin doesn’t even try to guess anymore.

There’s an old kettle in the backroom. There’s also a bathroom with a sink, and Colin fills the kettle and switches it on. 

In the drawers Richard keeps a plastic bag full of chocolate cookies for emergencies. Colin has never been sure what kind of emergency requires sweets in abundance but he figures it might just be something like what’s happening right now so he puts it on the table.

He takes a roll of papertowel from the cupboard and throws it at Bradley across the room. Bradley doesn’t catch it letting it hit him in the chest instead, and generally he’s just standing there looking at Colin mutely with his clear blue _puppy_ eyes, and that is really disturbing.

“Try to dry yourself,” Colin says. He thinks, what if Bradley is some sort of maniac who goes after young skinny Irish men and what if his lifeless body will be found here tomorrow morning. Well, if Bradley is one then he sucks at the secrecy that a decent psychopathic criminal should keep up to – too many of Colin’s acquaintances in London already know about him. And anyway, he doesn’t look threatening. He just drives Colin mad and vulnerable, and that isn’t considered a crime in any country. Though maybe it should.

The rain becomes heavier. The window looks like someone is pouring water from a barrel on it, it’s just an incessant steady flow – not even a furious torrent which would, maybe, end in a few minutes, and Colin feels cold wind creeping in between cracks in the window-frame. If it doesn’t stop any time soon, he’ll have to call a taxi for himself and Bradley because they both don’t have umbrellas with them. This waste of money is not something he’s looking forward to. Maybe he should shove Bradley into the taxi and cover himself with those plastic sheets from packages that are stuffed in the cupboard.

The kettle whistles deafeningly hinting that the water is boiling. Colin makes some rather obnoxious tea with cheap tea-bags while Bradley dries himself with towels succeeding only in leaving chunks of soaked paper in his hair and on his face. He looks cold, and Colin, cursing under his breath in Gaelic, finds an old blanket that is supposed to keep several Chekhov novellas in Japanese and Dutch from dust. It will do for Bradley, and if it doesn’t he can go and find something more suitable on his own, the idiot.

“Thank you,” Bradley takes the mug wrapping his fingers, pale from cold, around it. They are beautiful as well as the rest of him; unlike Colin’s own, they are graceful without being too long and manly without being rough. What exactly is he doing here tonight, with Colin? Shouldn’t he be somewhere else, with rich lovely people surrounding him and catering to his every whim with much more delight than Colin does?

“Welcome,” Colin settles on politeness, as usually, and blows at his tea – he doesn’t like it scalding, his tongue and palate are way too sensitive for that.

They don’t talk for a while, sipping their tea and eating the cookies which prove to be a bit stale but still fine. Maybe Colin won’t need a coffee tonight since he’s eaten half a dozen cookies already.

Bradley’s fingers are covered with chocolate and he doesn’t notice that he leaves sticky brown smudges on everything he touches. Colin doesn’t mind – this place needs to be cleaned anyway, and Richard has a habit of doing it on his own every two weeks or so as it’s actually his realm.

“Why do you work here?” Bradley asks.

“Why are you asking?” Colin asks back.

“Dunno,” Bradley shrugs almost losing the blanket. “I just want to know.”

“Why do people work? They need money for a living. You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept, I see.”

“I work hard!” Bradley looks genuinely offended. 

“Who are you, then?” Colin raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“I’m a professional footballer,” Bradley says and immediately goes pink. “Well, I’m not playing as it is but I’m training with everyone and if there’s a spot in the team next year, I’ll be the one to take it.”

“Which team?” Colin doesn’t actually care but Bradley looks like he hopes that Colin will ask, and just in case Bradley _is_ a maniac it won’t do to disappoint him about such little things, will it?

“Manchester United,” Bradley goes all bright-eyed and even more boyish than before. He puts his mug down and starts gesturing wildly explaining his position on the field and some football tactics. Colin is lost after the first half of the first phrase, and Bradley’s voice just washes over him like the sound of the rain, lulling and tuneful.

“I don’t have a clue what you are talking about,” Colin confesses when Bradley takes a break to drink some of his tea. “But go on, never mind.”

He isn’t sure if he’s being sarcastic here or if he really wants Bradley to continue with his cryptic football tales. Bradley looks like he isn’t sure about it either.

“I always wanted to be a footballer,” Bradley says after a pause. “I’d thought of being an actor but chose football in the end. Did you always want to be a bookstore fairy ghost?”

Now it’s a ghost as well. Nice.

“Nope,” says Colin, nonchalant. “My heart’s desire has always been to be a guardian angel for stupid footballers who don’t know what to do with their evening except for loitering around bookstores and calling me mythical creatures of all kinds.”

Bradley isn’t taken aback by that: he grins mischievously and steals one more cookie from the bag.

“I like that you’re getting the point,” he says through a mouthful of chocolate.

“The point? What point?”

“Being my guardian angel suits you. Better than selling books. I think you should pursue this career.”

All of a sudden, the thought of maniacs becomes somewhat less than a joke.

“I knew there had to be something wrong with you.” Colin is disappointed – though he has no idea why – and he lets it be heard in his voice. “All those good looks and toothy smiles, I thought they were bound to hide a jerk underneath, just for balance, you know. But you are not a jerk, you’re a crazy stalker of some kind, aren’t you? All the shit you’ve been saying was just shit, right?”

Bradley coughs, choking on his half-chewed cookie, and for a brief moment Colin contemplates helping him get it through – and then Bradley makes it on his own and starts laughing. The trills of his laughter fill the small room; his eyes are closed, his head is thrown back, his mouth is, for dumbfounded Colin, a mess of wet, bright pink lips and shiny white teeth; he’s shaking with sincere, uneven laughter entirely enthralled with it like there’s nothing more important in the world than opening himself up like that, so completely that it’s almost physically painful to see for Colin. He’d rather crawl back to his metaphorical shell right now and hide from Bradley whose laughter on its own seems aglow and blinding.

“Sorry,” Bradley exhales after about forty excruciating seconds. “I just… I never thought you’d actually think something like this. God, I’m sorry, I was just kidding, have you no sense of humour?” He giggles delightedly like a little girl.

Colin feels like an idiot. And the more understanding sinks in, the more stupid and fussy and paranoid he feels, and he doesn’t like either the feeling or the one who caused it in the first place.

“I think my mission is complete, then,” he smiles at Bradley – there’s not a single kittenwatt involved though, it’s just a stretch of lips which alone requires a certain amount of willpower. He takes the phone and opens the phonebook lying nearby to find a taxi service number. “You are now dried, fed and entertained, it’s time to go home.”

“Wait…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not making you walk in the rain, I’m calling a taxi,” Colin interrupts.

“But…” Bradley frowns. “I said I’m sorry and I truly am! You… you can’t just kick me out so suddenly just because you feel like it. Surely?”

“You just watch me,” Colin says and rings the taxi service, having finally found a number.

Bradley looks at him disbelievingly all the time. While Colin orders a taxi, while they are waiting and Colin rinses the mugs and hides the cookies, while the taxi pulls off and moves into the rain and Bradley’s face is plastered to the back windows between his spread palms, and he’s looking at Colin like he still expects him to snort and say: “it was a joke, gotcha!”

Colin never says anything like that and, frankly, he doesn’t feel the slightest inclination to do so. He’s really tired and he sits down at the table where he and Bradley had their tea. 

I’ll just stay here for awhile before I have to go outside, Colin thinks. He registers falling asleep with his cheek on the wooden surface but only barely so. His neck will give him hell in the morning and his spine probably will too, but Colin can’t be bothered right now.

He reminds himself to wake up early so as not to be laughed at by the twins who have the morning shift tomorrow, and there are huge alarm clocks in his dreams all night: they scold him for laziness in high-pitched ring-y voices and they all have clear reproachful unblinking blue eyes.

* * *

The morning proves to be fruitful in the aspect of those day-to-day duties which can never be accomplished once and for all: Colin buys cereal and tea and beans and some washing powder and cleans his tiny flat from top to bottom since it’s high time to do that if he doesn’t want to break his neck stumbling on a pile of something or get an allergy to dust. The duties are tedious and well-known; Colin does them automatically, every motion being habitual and worked out to fit the others for maximum efficiency in the minimal amount of time. He usually likes it but today it’s bad because nothing distracts him from thinking, and for some unfathomable but yet irritating reason he can’t stop thinking about Bradley.

Bradley is no-one in his life, just a bizarre stranger. Colin shouldn’t feel any regrets knowing that Bradley will hardly come back today or any other day in the foreseeable future; that’s what he wanted, after all. But then he thinks of Bradley laughing and saying all kinds of senseless things and reading Isherwood intently and can’t help but wonder why Bradley liked the book so much. Was it a bet, or a dare, or did he actually read serious things like that out of his own volition? Perhaps if Bradley turned up again Colin would ask him about that, and Bradley would answer honestly. But if he has anything that can count as pride and brains he’ll consider himself unwelcome after last night.

The beans Colin cooks for lunch taste like stale chocolate, and he downs two cups of strong tea to wash the annoying reminder from his mouth.

* * *

He comes early this afternoon, almost an hour before the twins’ shift is over, and watches them fuss around the store. They are practically identical; Colin knows Gerald from Geoffrey only by their step – the former is confident and nimble even among the scary piles with Tolstoi and Trollope, and the latter is clumsy and noisy, all pulsing with restless vibrant energy. They wear the same clothes and haircuts and they always work their shifts together, though Colin doesn’t know how Richard, who couldn’t tell one from the other even if his life was at stake, figures out how much to pay to whom. But it’s not Colin’s business anyway, so he never asks.

Customers are either in love with the twins or freaked out by how much they seem to be one person. When a girl cries out “Christ” seeing them moving towards each other from book-made little corridors, Colin stands up and takes it to himself to console her and offer some Robert Asprin as a cure for every possible psychological trauma. 

He gets a hint of a smile from Gerald for that and a giggle from Geoffrey. In some aspects, Geoffrey is just as unpredictable and bizarre as Bradley. And Colin still thinks of Bradley even as he takes the money from the girl and starts, not having anything better to do, filling his unfortunate database with titles and names.

Today he makes sure to save what he did every twenty minutes. He types without looking at the keyboard, the worn keys so familiar that he can name each one with his eyes shut, only by feeling. The twins leave the store at some point, and Colin has to get books from the far corners five times and resorts to asking Richard for help twice, but all in all he makes a good job woth bringing the chaos to order today. 

At least, until Bradley shows up.

“Don’t you happen to have Sheckley’s _The Game of X_ , by any chance?”

Colin stiffens at the familiar voice.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he says lifting his gaze, and it’s Bradley indeed, all light and shiny on this dreary day, his face concentrated, and it looks adorable again, as if he learnt to concentrate while being a cute kid and never re-learnt to do it properly unattractively like an adult should. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about a man who got caught up in a dream – an absurd one, but also endearing of sorts and breathtaking,” the words roll off of Bradley’s tongue like he has written and memorized them before coming here. Most probably he hasn’t, but Colin wouldn’t put anything past Bradley.

“Really? Does it have a happy ending?”

“If you call it happy,” Bradley bits his lower lip, lost in his thoughts. “He decided to stay in that dream. It could get him killed any day but he loved it enough to believe that he’ll be lucky enough to make it through safe and sound.”

“It’s kinda optimistic in comparison to Isherwood you bought last time,” Colin says carefully. Bradley is a bomb waiting to explode, and Colin would really wish to put an end to this conversation but he doesn’t know how.

“It is,” Bradley agrees looking like he doesn’t really agree.

“So what is it you want?” Colin’s patience is running out pretty quickly. He’s no saint and Bradley keeps pushing him with his mere existence which is just not fair, to think of it.

“A book,” Bradley looks surprised. “Sheckley’s…”

“I’ve heard that the first time, thanks,” Colin interrupts. “I don’t know about Isherwood but you can buy loads of Sheckley on every corner so there was no need to’ve come here for a copy. What do you actually want?”

“I want a book,” Bradley insists. “Is it a crime these days? And you don’t know, maybe this store is the closest to my place and I just can’t be arsed to walk extra miles to look through all the corners in London in case there’s some Sheckley on them.”

“But it isn’t the closest,” Colin suggests.

“It isn’t.” Bradley smiles.

And this is where Colin snaps. The exact moment when it is just one smile too much to bear; he could name it precisely if he glanced at the clock above the door.

“What is it you want?” He doesn’t shout, he hisses because he suddenly feels out of breath. “What the heck do you want from me? Why the fuck do you keep coming and creep the shit out of me? Get the hell outta here and don’t come fucking back!”

When he’s that emotional, his Irish accent thickens growing up on his words like mould until they are almost indistinguishable. Though the intonation would hardly leave any scope for imagination.

Bradley blinks at Colin, slowly, confusedly; then he scratches his nose absent-mindedly, evidently pondering on a possible answer, and sneezes.

“That,” Colin says, feeling the urge to laugh but not exactly feeling cheerful, “was rather anticlimactic of you.”

“Sorry,” Bradley shrugs and leans on the nearest bookcase. “Never been good at such stuff. Next time tell me in advance that I gotta be as dramatic as you are, I’ll do my best.”

“Next time?..” Colin snorts and waves the unasked question off. There will be a next time if Bradley thinks so. There’s something of a natural element in Bradley, and the world seems to just go along with his wishes taking them in like rivers take raindrops, quite effortlessly.

There are rains, though, that make rivers overflow and cause a lot of damage to everything they touch and themselves. That is exactly the reason why Colin dislikes Bradley so much.

Or, maybe, _likes_ him so much. Colin is not sure about that.

“You wanna hang out?” Bradley asks like nothing happened, and Colin, bewildered, starts doubting his own memory a little bit because something did, but it’s like not a weakest breeze has ever stirred the invincible surface of Bradley’s calmness.

“Water?” Colin asks.

Bradley grins.

“Maybe some soy sauce for you to add to your water if you behave.”

“Deal,” Colin says.

Oh, he is so, so screwed. He doesn’t know why or how exactly, but there’s a distinct feeling of screwedness that is never mistaken.

Before leaving, Bradley actually buys _The Game of X_ , and this simple thing freaks Colin out more than anything else.

* * *

There’s no car outside when Colin walks out of the store though he half-expects to see some fancy sleek thing parked nearby. Bradley is standing too close while Colin locks the doors; he’s watching Colin’s movements without saying anything.

This is so damn awkward.

“So,” says Colin starting to walk down the pavement, “how was your day?”

“We trained,” Bradley flashes him a smile, but Colin knows better then to fall for it: there’s no kittenwatts in it which is unusual for Bradley as far as Colin knows. “I took a shower then and read Sheckley for awhile. And went here to pick you up. What about you? Have you been your grumpy fairy self with the customers all day?”

“I’ll have you know,” Colin feigns indignation because it’s easy to be here and now and the feeling of a bizarre evening awaiting him sends champagne-kind bubbles into his blood, “everyone who knows me is sure I’m charming and lovely and not grumpy at all.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Bradley snorts.

“Fuck you,” says Colin and beams at Bradley with a moderate couple of dozens of kittenwatts. “And what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Colin says. He means it as a joke but he’s always been shit at friendly interaction which is partly why he’s considered endearing by some people. It comes out too serious and Bradley somehow sobers up, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets.

“I’m… not doing all that well. I don’t know if I’ll get a spot on the team, or if they’ll take another youngster in my place when they are tired of me being an idiot on the field.”

“If it helps, you’re an idiot all the time,” Colin says. With Bradley he can afford being cruel because Bradley is still practically a random stranger who has no particular place in Colin’s life. It gives certain freedom that Colin likes having.

“It doesn’t.” Bradley smiles artificially again.

They walk side by side each deep into his own thoughts. It’s getting dark and Colin thinks that they should probably find a pub or a café or at least a coffeeshop as it’s bloody freezing outside and he’s hungry and thirsty.

“I want to be an actor,” Colin says looking at the pavement. It’s dirty after all the rains and old. It might be several centuries old for all Colin knows. “I’ve graduated a drama school in Glasgow. I go to some or other audition every week or even more often. I landed a role only once, last year; an emo-kid in an episode of _Doctor Who_ , and that’s it. Well, there was one on stage, while I was still at drama school, but that’s definitely it.”

Bradley nods. It should be offending in some way as Colin tells Bradley what he’s never told anyone here in London, something personal and uncomfortable like pain in a torn muscle which is always there even if you try not to pay attention, – it isn’t.

“I think you’ll land one again soon,” Bradley says. “Your fairy cheekbones must count for something.”

“Stop this crap with fairies and ghosts, will you?”

“I just say what I think,” Bradley looks at Colin guiltily. “I get that some don’t like it but I don’t catch up with what’s going on soon enough to shut up.”

“You’re giving me compliments, well, sort of compliments, I suppose. Everyone likes them, I do too. But you actually mean them, and that’s what’s the crap part.”

“What is so crappy about the truth? You told me yourself not to lie.”

“No one expects others to tell the truth, even if they ask for it.”

“Gosh, you people are weird,” Bradley says sounding so long-suffering as if he’s an alien who finds humans totally illogical and is in despair trying to understand them.

“Look who’s talking!” Colin laughs, freely and loudly – something he hasn’t done for several months now, especially because of such silly thing.

There’s Bradley’s answering laughter, like a portion of magic salve on old wounds, healing some invisible cuts and cracks inside Colin, and he feels that breathing becomes noticeably easier as Bradley steps onto the road with his back forward and his face still to Colin, still laughing his throaty laugh that seems warm like mulled wine. There’s evening darkness around Bradley trying to stick to his light hair and white teeth and sparkling eyes. There’re also two bright rays highlighting Bradley from his left, making him shine unbearably before there’s a thud, and Bradley is thrown away from the rays, somewhere far where his body looks like a piece of dirty cloth on the pavement.

Colin hears tires screeching, and then someone is screaming but it’s not Bradley.

He runs to Bradley, and the air around him feels thick. Bradley is lying on his back, pale, with his eyes closed, his posture awkward like he’s broken in several impossible places, but he’s breathing, his heart’s beating when Colin presses his ear to Bradley’s chest in order to know for sure.

There’s something wet and annoying in his eyes, and he blinks furiously all the time while he fumbles for the phone and dials the emergency, keeping his free hand on Bradley’s wrist, never losing his pulse which is really fast and not so steady but it’s there nonetheless.

Bradley can’t die. Bradley mustn’t die.

Colin doesn’t think past that. He’s pretty sure he stops thinking altogether.

Bradley eyes are still closed. Colin sits on the pavement looking at Bradley’s eyelashes, dark brown unlike his hair, and waits for them to flutter. They never do.

He registers the help coming only because they want him to let go of Bradley’s wrist, but he can’t, though he’s no idea why, he can’t let go, it’s the matter of life and death, and there’s someone’s voice full of irritation: “Give this one something, for Christ’s sake, he’s in shock! At least, I don’t know, a blanket”. Then Colin feels unfamiliar heavy warmth on his shoulders and a sharp stab of a needle in his arm.

He remembers his grip slackening but he drifts into drug-induced unconsciousness before finally letting go.

* * *

He wakes up to a recognizable hospital smell and the feeling of crisp cheap linen under his cheek.

“This is not fair,” says someone beside him. It takes Colin about ten full seconds to recognize the voice and to sit up like he’s been kicked: it’s Bradley.

“Not fair?” Colin repeats without thinking much of what the hell Bradley’s trying to say by that.

“Yeah, mate, exactly.” Bradley looks worse for wear but definitely alive. His left leg’s in a cast, and he keeps his palm splayed on his ribs so they must be damaged as well. There’s a green sticky bandage on his forehead, just where his hair starts, and there are shadows under his eyes as if he hasn’t slept at all. “I talked about us breaking legs, remember? Well, you are safe and sound and I’m here with my bone feeling like it’s been chewed by something big and even more grumpy than you are.”

Colin can’t hold back a flicker of a smile at the words, but there’s nothing cheerful in Bradley’s face.

He’s a footballer, Colin remembers with sudden, harsh clarity. He’s just started his professional career as it is. He can’t afford lying around for many weeks waiting for his leg to heal – without training, with only hope that his leg will recover to its former strength.

Only he doesn’t have a choice on the matter. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Colin says; words come out stunted as the realization of what happened dawns at him fully. He slip from his bed to the floor and clutches at Bradley’s hand – Bradley, not having expected that, doesn’t return the squeeze, but Colin holds on tightly anyway. “God, I’m sorry. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be there when that car…”

He has to take a breath to continue.

“I’m so sorry, Bradley,” he says again, and there’s nothing more left to say and he stays there silent, nailed to the floor by the weight of huge, huge, huge guilt.

“Don’t say that,” Bradley’s false light mood is broken, and his voice is quivering a little. “It’s not your fault those idiots were drunk and didn’t know to keep to the speed limit. Not your fault I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“It is,” Colin breathes out, pressing his forehead to the edge of Bradley’s bed.

“It isn’t,” Bradley says, too softly and warmly for someone who is the one needing comfort here. “It really isn’t, fairy.”

For once, Colin doesn’t object to being called ridiculous names.

“Is it bad?” he asks instead. “What do the doctors say?”

“Doctor Todd says it was nasty,” Bradley squeezes Colin’s hand, so slightly it might be just a subconscious movement. “Like, the bone cracked in two and sticking out from the flesh. Good thing I haven’t seen it, I’m not really good with blood and… other ew stuff. They put it all back where it belongs and there’s a cast and basically all I have to do is lie down and wait for a couple of months at least.”

“I will fetch you some oranges,” Colin says so that not to say “I’m sorry” again, because he just wants to repeat it over and over until this suffocating guilt in his chest ceases. “And a book. Do you want a book? I can bring you practically anything from work.”

Bradley looks at Colin in confusion like he didn’t expect that Colin wouldn’t flee from his life forever this very morning and would offer to bring bloody oranges later. Seriously, who does oranges these days? It’s so cheesy, Colin thinks.

“Could you fetch me my phone?” he asks. “It’s in my jacket, over there, on the chair.”

Colin goes up feeling a bit dizzy and brings Bradley his jacket, all covered in mud and blood. Why on earth there’s blood on the jacket, it must be only on jeans since Bradley broke a leg and not something else, right?

Maybe, there was a lot of blood.

Colin sighs deeply and perches on the edge of Bradley’s bed waiting for the latter to make a few calls.

Bradley talks to his coach first sounding resolute and vulnerable at the came time and really brief; then he rings his mum and spends ten minutes persuading her not to run to him immediately all the way to London, she can totally postpone it till the weekend, and today’s Thursday which is quite alright.

He adds in the end:

“Yeah, mum, I’m being taken care of. I’ll even get oranges and whatever books I want, you see, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Colin isn’t sure if it’s comfortable or not to be mentioned like this. But _taking care of Bradley_ is something right and warm and pleasantly heavy under his ribs, so he decides to bring Bradley anything he needs, fruit or books or anything, really. It’d be worth this strange but precious feeling.

Colin has never actually taken care of anyone before, he was always the one who got additional biscuits and small lovely favours. It’s nice to be giving, not receiving this once.

And it’s not nuclear physics, right? One can’t screw up taking care of another, it’s simple enough for everyone to be able to make it work if they so wish. Colin is sure he’ll give it a hell of a try.

When Bradley lowers the hand with the phone, a small crease between his eyebrows and an unhappy tilt to his lips, Colin takes the mobile and types his number as if he’s going to call himself.

“Here. That’s my number. I’m working morning shift today,” he explains hastily, “I’ll be back in the afternoon with the oranges and the book. Which one do you want? Oh, and I’ll buy you a toothbrush and other things like that, ok? You’re gonna need it. Something you want, just text me. Ok?”

Bradley frowns.

“Are you serious?”

“Um… yes I am. Why?” Colin knows he’s lame. A deaf man could hear that in his voice.

“Yesterday you could barely stand the sight of me. And now you behave like a mother hen. Not that I don’t appreciate it, mind you, but it’s… unexpected. Is it you thinking it’s your fault? Because it’s not, and you don’t need to do it out of guilt.”

“I’m not doing it because I feel guilty.” Colin bites his lower lip unsure what else to say. “And it’s not like I couldn’t stand the sight of you, really. I like the sight,” he adds with a chuckle, hoping to turn it all into a joke. “It’s you talking that freaks me out but I think I’ve almost got used to it by now.”

“Well, we shouldn’t let this hard-earned habit go to waste, then,” Bradley says, but he’s not smiling.

“We shouldn’t,” agrees Colin quietly and smiles at Bradley with a hundred of blinding kittenwatts before standing up. “See you in the afternoon.”

* * *

Colin expects Bradley to text him during the day. Maybe not with requests for things but with some silly notions which Bradley seems to be able to say all day long when he’s talking out loud. Colin isn’t sure what it is that he expects but anyway not a single text ever comes. Colin even checks if there’s signal and if the phone is broken.

Everything’s alright, it must be just Bradley not texting.

Which is not alright when Colin thinks of it, but he can deal with it.

Ever the man of his word, Colin looks for a book. It proves to be hard, harder then most things he’s ever done, and between customers Colin spends long minutes wandering around the shelves and trying to picture Bradley’s smile in his mind, Bradley’s clear eyes of someone who doesn’t do much thinking as it is and Bradley’s tense crease between the eyebrows that shows that there are some rather enigmatic hidden depths inside him like a distant sound of water rippling shows that there is cool iron-taste water at the bottom of a well.

He picks Nabokov, and Tolkien, and Fry, and even Sheldon and puts them all back. They don’t fit with the Bradley of Colin’s imagination though they may fit nicely with the real Bradley who Colin doesn’t know at all. At last he chooses Pratchett, some of the Discworld series because even if Bradley has already read it, it never hurts to reread a Pratchett. Colin’s pretty sure there’s no man on the Earth who wouldn’t smile reading whatever Pratchett has written and maybe making someone with a broken leg smile is a vital part of taking care of them.

This whole caretaking lark reminds Colin of nuclear physics more and more as time goes by, but once he’s in, he can’t go back even if he wants, like he’s fallen into a river and is taken along with the stream.

There are oranges in the nearest store but they look awful, small and somehow crinkled as if someone has been sitting on them for quite a while. Colin is torn between buying them because he promised and choosing something else and time ticks by and ticks and he’s afraid to miss the visiting hours altogether.

Oh God.

Colin checks his phone once again – nothing from Bradley, nothing from anyone – and settles for some grapes and a single orange as a symbol of both his ability to keep his promises and the fact that the oranges here are, in fact, hideous.

For tomorrow he’d better go to another store, he thinks. Also he thinks that maybe he should be bothered because of making plans for tomorrow but he isn’t.

* * *

Bradley lies on the bed with his back to the door and appears to be asleep. Other people in the ward talk quietly with their relatives and friends who came to visit, and Colin manoeuvres among beds and bags and legs in the aisles feeling as clumsy as they come in the correspondent dictionary entry.

“Hi,” he says quietly stopping at Bradley’s bed, just to check if he’s really sleeping or just pretending to be so that not to feel so utterly alone while everyone else has someone there for them. That’s what Colin might do in a situation like Bradley’s.

Bradley stirs and turns slowly on his back, his eyes bleary, his hair a mess.

“Oh,” Bradley says. “I… er… I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Well, I hope you’re glad that I did,” Colin says. The feeling of utmost awkwardness overcomes him but he fights it because really, they don’t have time for that, the visiting hours are not endless. “I brought you some fruit and a book. How are you?”

“Leg still broken,” Bradley snorts and sits up rubbing his eyes. “I’ve consumed more pills today than I could imagine and my coach doesn’t sound happy about my prospects but otherwise I’m fine. My mum is sure to come and fuss over me this weekend.”

“Good,” Colin says and sits down on the edge of Bradley’s bed. They are close enough now that Colin can see the subtle changes of colour in Bradley’s eyes – where his irises are lighter, where, closer to the pupil, they are darker. This feels intimate in a way Colin is not sure that he has experienced before.

Bradley smiles at him, and his eyes are suddenly lit up with a kind of impish expression which surely doesn’t mean that he’s up to any good.

“She wants to meet you, you know,” he says. “My mum. She was really confused when I told her that we met a couple of times and I asked you out but we didn’t even get to the sitting down and talking part when it happened and now you’re here for me, a complete stranger.”

Colin blushes and curses his pale skin giving all his emotions away.

“Well… I’d like to meet her, too, I guess,” he says ‘cause it’s polite and it’s not like Bradley’s mum is going to bite his head off. He hasn’t done Bradley any harm, after all, not considering the fact that Colin was the reason Bradley was standing there in the street in the first place.

“Really?” Bradley lifts his eyebrows. “Meeting parents even before we kiss at least once – aren’t you a little old-fashioned, my Irish fairy?”

Colin can’t stand it anymore – that’s why he grabs a pillow and hits Bradley on the head. 

“Oi!” exclaims Bradley laughing, and Colin laughs along, and it all suddenly becames so very easy and simple after that.

* * *

**Irish Fairy**  
 _a girl just asked me which part of twilight i liked best & if i thought edward callen hot. ew. do i look like i fancy glittering vampires in my free time?_

**The Nut Job**  
_u certainly look like u know some vampires what with ur paleness & all so cant blame her. do u see the sun, like, ever?_

**Irish Fairy**  
_ill have you know that all vampires in my life r proper ones they dont glitter & they actually drink blood_

**The Nut Job**  
_can u invite one 2 spend a night with the head nurse here? shes evil like that chick from the cuckoos nest_

**Irish Fairy**  
_if u ask nicely i could think of it. theyr busy guys u know virgins to drink up, hunters to throw off their tail. is the head nurse a virgin?_

**The Nut Job**  
_not gonna ask anything of u nicely. i dont wanna know about her sexlife y u sayin such disgusting things? ur evil just like her_

**Irish Fairy**  
_mwa ha ha r u scarred 4 life now?_

**The Nut Job**  
_u wish_

**Irish Fairy**  
_a customer gotta go call u after work_

* * *

Colin doesn’t like sitting on the edge of Bradley’s bed. His back hurts like hell after sitting for hours on this narrow hard edge, half-turned to Bradley, and more often than not it cuts off the blood circulation in his bum; he’s never suspected before that this part of his body could suffer from such an inconvenience.

Today he ends up on the bed, side by side with Bradley who doesn’t seem to mind – on the contrary, he urges Colin to stretch his limbs before “you’ll go all stiff and stay like you are forever and you’ll only be able to play Quasimodo after that”. It feels unusual being tucked on a hospital bed beside Bradley who smells like pills and bandages and a bit like sweat since he obviously couldn’t take a proper shower with the plaster on and without anyone who would help him. Unusual, but not unpleasantly so. Bradley is radiating heat like a furnace, perhaps that’s because he’s an athlete, and Colin’s own fingers are always cold so he puts them on the side of Bradley’s neck to get warm and laughs at Bradley’s indignant spluttering and rather lame attempts to push Colin off to the floor. 

It’s easy to forget that they are not alone, Bradley has this fascinating ability to fill all the space available with himself, with his laughter, and voice, and sparkling eyes, and smooth hot skin. Their feet get caught up in Bradley’s blanket, and they are trying to untangle the whole mess which is not easy with the bulky plaster and three kicking plasterless feet and with draining fits of unmanly giggling. 

Colin is so busy laughing into Bradley’s shoulder and listening to Bradley telling him some amazing utter nonsense about bananas, Godzillas, and aliens, that he doesn’t hear the ward door opening and a new person coming in. 

“Oh,” Bradley says stopping his banana tale in the middle of a phrase. “Hi mum.” 

Colin stiffens in Bradley’s half-embrace, not really ready to turn around and face the mum. It’s probably rude, though, to stay like that, and he forces himself to move and smile without getting caught up in the twists of the blanket even more. 

“Good afternoon, Mrs.…” he says and has to stop because he doesn’t know Bradley’s surname. It just never occurred to him to ask. 

“James, dear, it’s Mrs. James,” she smiles encouragingly, and Colin blushes wishing he was anywhere but not here right now. “You must be Colin. I’ve heard a lot of you from Bradley on the phone.” 

“Have you?” Colin mutters. “Well… nothing too terrible… I hope.” 

“Only the good things,” she’s got the same smile as Bradley’s which is, of course, no surprise. “Thanks for taking care of Bradley all these days.” 

“You’re welcome,” Colin feels his ears burning. Judging by the fact that Bradley’s silent, the latter must be quite flabbergasted too. “It’s no hardship at all, really. He’s nice when he doesn’t act like a crazy pillock so…” 

Mrs. James laughs and Colin gets a half-hearted nudge on his ribs from pouting Bradley. Probably, that wasn’t the wisest thing to say considering all circumstances, but Colin can’t very well catch the words that are already out of his mouth. 

“How are you feeling, darling? When can you go home?” Mrs. James ruffles her son’s hair. 

“Fine,” Bradley shrugs. “Well, apart from the leg, you know. They say I gotta stay for a couple of days more so that they can X-ray me one more time and make sure it’s started healing alright, so if they do – make sure, I mean – I’ll be out of here soon.” 

Bradley’s from Devon, Colin remembers. His mum will probably take him there with her – she’s got a job back there and a chance to take care of him properly and now, when training is out of the question, there’s nothing here in London that’d actually be a reason for Bradley to stay, especially with so many sensible reasons to go. 

Colin suddenly feels both chilled to the bones and hot-flushed and starts scrambling out of the bed. There’s something hollow and clenching inside him; it must be his stomach reminding him that he hasn’t had any lunch today. He may as well go and find at least a coffee machine to buy an overly sugary and totally disgusting brownish drink that they sell there. 

Nobody stops him as Mrs. James and Bradley seem to be fully absorbed in their conversation. He makes good use of his discreet escape; he splashes some cold water onto his face in the toilets and he manages to kick the old coffee machine just right and get a plastic cup with the brownish drink that’s for some reason called coffee. 

He doesn’t want to be intrusive and, after some thinking, he buys an apple from the machine in the hall and eats and drinks sitting on the sofa for visitors in front of the nurse’s desk. He’d probably go home at this point and just text Bradley later but he has left his jacket hanging on the headboard of the bed and his backpack lying on the floor next to the cupboard; and it’s cold outside, and lots of mostly random but important stuff is kept in the backpack, so there’s no way he’s leaving without popping back to the ward. 

When he comes back, the visiting hours are almost over and Mrs. James looks like she’s about to leave. 

“Ah, Colin, here you are,” she smiles at him again. “We thought of calling you if you don’t show up.” 

“Erm, I thought, well, that, maybe, I shouldn’t be loitering around while you’re talking and all, so, well,” he stumbles and just shuts up after that not sure he’ll be able to say anything right. He has already made enough of an idiot of himself for one day. 

“It’s alright, darling,” she says like she understands. Bradley is silent, he just looks at Colin very intently as if studying his reactions. “I was persuading Bradley to came back to Devon with me for a couple of months until he recovers but he thinks he’ll be just fine here in London. Well, he can’t be, not on his own, can he? With a broken leg there’s no way he can do any housework, and hiring help is pretty expensive. We can afford it, though…” 

Here it is, Colin thinks. Here’s his cue to step into the conversation and say what seems natural to say despite the fact that he only knows Bradley very briefly and has little right to make suggestions like that. The idea freaks him out a bit and terrifies him and looks like something a lot bigger on the inside then on the outside like the TARDIS or something equally absurd and fantastic and awesome, and it’s not really his place to come up with it. 

He already decides to say something along the lines of “I think it’s best for him to came back with you, yeah, the most reasonable thing to do”, but then he meets Bradley’s gaze, unblinking and hard and strangely desperate, and something shifts neatly inside his head like a switch. 

Isn’t reasonable overrated, he thinks. 

He doesn’t break the eye contact with Bradley while speaking though he actually addresses his mother: 

“I suppose there’s no need to make him travel all the way home with his leg in this state, it should be really uncomfortable. And about hiring some help… I’d be happy to do whatever’s necessary for him, and I don’t need any money. Well, not in case Bradley’s used to eating caviar in buckets for dinner, for that I’ll have to ask for some financial support.” 

Colin sees Bradley catching his breath, his pupils going wider in disbelief and joy, his lips curling slowly into a lopsided and totally mad grin. 

Oh God, Colin thinks absent-mindedly, what I’m getting myself into. 

His blood is pounding in his ears but not deafeningly enough for him not to hear Mrs. James’ response: 

“You’d do that? Are you sure, Colin? Taking care of anyone who can only lie down and ask for this and that to be brought to their bedside is really hard work.” 

They have probably discussed it while he was away fighting the coffee machine. Bradley must have come up with the suggestion that Colin would look after him just fine, and Mrs. James must have said that no one can expect someone they know for a few days to willingly take such a burden on their shoulders. And Bradley may have offered to wait and see if Colin volunteers to help all by himself which would prove Mrs. James wrong and Bradley right. 

You little mad bastard, Colin thinks with tenderness he himself doesn’t expect to feel towards Bradley. 

“Well, doing the housework for him would be just like doing it for myself, wouldn’t it? And if he’s more obnoxious than usually because of having to lie down, I can always beat him up with a pillow and make him some porridge for breakfast.” 

“Hey, I hate porridge!” Bradley protests. 

“I know,” Colin smirks. He can go on with threats like that if they always make Bradley scowl so adorably, he decides forgetting for a moment that they aren’t alone in the room. 

Mrs. James chuckles softly cutting Colin’s reverie short. 

“Well, as long as you are determined to take good care of my son…” 

“I am, ma'am,” Colin salutes her grinning from ear to ear and letting an uncontrollably large amount of kittenwatts out. The border has been crossed; why not try and enjoy the decision he’s made while he can? 

“I think you’ll have great fun together, boys,” she says, and this time around it’s Bradley who can’t help but blush profusely. 

Colin doesn’t know exactly why Bradley’s blushing but nonetheless it doesn’t seem uncalled for.

* * *

On Wednesday they move Bradley from the hospital to his flat. It’s bigger than Colin’s – apparently, footballers make more money than unlucky wannabe-actors. Mrs. James fusses and frets a lot making sure Bradley’s comfortable and sends Colin to the nearest supermarket twice with money and a list of things to buy and every time he gets back with huge bags. There’s no way Bradley will be able to eat it all before it gets rotten unless he’s a reincarnation of Gargantua. Colin imagines Bradley so fat at the end of these two months that he can’t fit into his king-size bed. The image is disgusting and at the same time horribly cute like a kitten that’s just eaten a mouse and is covered with blood and pieces of fur is still cute.

Maybe he should stop thinking so much, obviously, it doesn’t do him any good. 

Mrs. James has Colin arrange everything Bradley might need, from his laptop to a clean handkerchief, in the order she thinks perfect and gives them both a lot of instructions on what and how to do before she leaves and the flat becomes very quiet and peaceful. Well, it would be peaceful here, if Colin didn’t find himself freaking out again. 

“Make yourself at home,” Bradley says. “I bet there are loads of vegetables and other healthy stuff in the fridge but we could order pizza and watch something. I’m starving, to be honest.” 

“You’re insane,” Colin declares. “You people are both raving mad,” he glances at the door which closed after Mrs. James approximately a minute ago. “The family of Mad Hatters. For all you know, I might be an axe-murderer and it’s not like you can run away from me now if I fancy chopping you up and dumping into the Thames. Hell, for all I know, _you_ may be an axe-murderer keeping plastic bags with your victims under the bed. Yet, she leaves me here with you like it’s supposed to be this way. And you behave like you’ve known me your whole life.” 

“I’m pretty sure I’m not an axe-murderer,” Bradley sounds highly amused by Colin’s worries. “If you have any doubts, though, you can check under the bed. You’ll find some porn mags, I think, and several stray socks but nothing more incriminating. Go on, check. You’ll have to look under it anyway, you’ve signed up for cleaning the flat regularly for me until I can do it myself, there’s no chance I’ll be able to keep any awful axe-murdering secrets from you. Oh, and I don’t think you are a maniac. I’ll hold to this opinion until you prove me wrong by killing me in my sleep and raping my dead body or something.” 

“Fuck off, you nitwit,” Colin says because there’s not much else he can say after this speech. 

He turns away and walks out of the bedroom which helps him reach two goals at once: firstly, not look at Bradley’s smug face, secondly, cross the small corridor and get to the phone in the living room and order some fucking pizza because he’s starving, too. 

“I’ll have anything with meat and cheese – the more, the better!” Bradley shouts. 

“Fuck off!” shouts Colin back again, but when the girl at the pizza house picks up he asks for a regular veggie pizza and for something with as much meat on it as they can manage to put without the pile falling apart – and if it tries to fall apart anyway, would they be so kind as to glue it all together with obscene amounts of melted cheese?

* * *

They watch _Dead Poets Society_ because it’s the first DVD Colin fishes from the shelf with his eyes closed. The pizza is so greasy that Colin suspects he’ll have to change the sheets on the bed – they eat lying on the covers but the grease is everywhere. Bradley smells like overfried bacon and burnt cheese and something very far-away and innocent like a high glass with milk on a sunny Sunday morning when you’re six.

They don’t touch each other, but Colin is still aware of Bradley’s presence. He doesn’t know if it’s exhaustion and lots of heavy food combined or just Bradley being next to him but he feels a little bit drunk, content, and kind of floating, and somewhat dizzy, and his every sense is as acute as it’s rarely been before. 

He doesn’t freak out any more ‘cause it appears to be useless – Bradley trusts him or pretends to quite successfully and laughs all his reasonable diatribes off. Instead of that Colin listens to John Keating reciting poem after poem and watches Bradley mouth the words silently along with the man on the screen. 

“Do you like this film so much that you actually know it by heart?” 

“Do I?” Bradley looks confused. “I suppose. I’ve watched it many times.” 

Colin stretches on the bed relaxing fully. He feels Bradley looking at him though the film is still on and it’s a much more interesting sight to behold. On the other hand, if Bradley’s watched it countless times, Colin might count here as something new and not studied thoroughly yet. 

Maybe it’s the way Bradley deals with the world. Whatever takes his fancy, he grabs it and doesn’t let go until he learns its insides and outsides, and the connections, and the strings, and the internal rules and laws, and never actually lets go after that because it’s gonna be a part of him forever. 

Colin imagines Bradley as a drop of tree resin and himself as a sluggish reckless fly. One movement of Bradley’s – and they’ll be found in several thousand years as a piece of amber, together, stuck one into another, still so very different things inherently but now inseparable without irreparable damage to both of them. 

It’s disturbing to have such thoughts when he’s completely sober. What’s more disturbing, however, is that Colin can tell Bradley all this bizarre shit that’s going on in his mind and Bradley will love it and go along with it and develop it until they both crack and laugh so hard that they can’t breathe. 

He’s not going to, though. To tell Bradley, that is. He’s way too sober for that. 

“If I were someone else, would you trust me, I mean, him or her, so much?” he asks instead. “What if I were Helen or the twins?” 

“Are they Irish? I prefer my caretakers Irish.” Bradley steals a slice of Colin’s pizza and Colin lets him. He’s stuffed already anyway. 

“Well, you could’ve met Katie,” he remembers. “Actually, you met her. She works in the coffeshop where you were reading that Isherwood. When I think of it, her pinky finger is twice more Irish than I am.” 

“Is she a fairy too?” 

“No,” Colin confesses. “She’s more like a banshee type, I think. Or a harpy. Or something. But she’s really cool if you don’t piss her off.” 

“Not interested,” Bradley waves all of Katie’s awesomeness off so casually as if things like that are lying around in the street and he doesn’t know how to get rid of them. “There’s no one a man can trust his broken leg with but fairies.” 

“Why’s that?” 

“Why? Well, because they are magic, of course,” Bradley says. 

So you think I’m magic, then, Colin thinks but doesn’t say it out loud. What does that make you if I’m a fairy? The idiot who danced with fairies all night long and came back home in the morning a fair bunch of years later? 

The film is so long that Bradley falls asleep before it finishes. Colin has to clean up the rubbish and to switch the DVD-player off and to put the pills for tomorrow morning on Bradley’s cupboard and to prepare some kind of breakfast for Bradley not to die of starvation until Colin gets off work and to make sure all the doors are locked before he goes home. He does all that but also, with his jacket already on, he leans down to touch Bradley’s hair – soft and freshly washed at some point today while Colin was away at the supermarket and shining in the low electric light from the corridor – and whispers, quietly, barely heard by himself: 

“We live on crispy pancakes,  
Of yellow tide-foam;  
Some in the reeds  
Of the black mountain lake,  
With frogs for our watch-dogs,  
All night awake.” 

Bradley stirs in his sleep and mumbles something incoherent and disgruntled as though he wants the continuation of the poem but that’s all Colin recalls from his childhood (and he’s not even sure he’s got this small bit right). 

He steps back and lets himself out of the flat into the chilly streets of London.

* * *

**The Nut Job**  
 _hows work?_

**Irish Fairy**  
_pretty dull. sold some antique conan doyle today to a man with a bright blue tie – the highlight of the day. howr u?_

**The Nut Job**  
_reading that agatha christie u brought to the hospital. suspect the gardener but he has a perfect alibi so im kinda lost here_

**Irish Fairy**  
_what alibi? gardeners cant have an alibi theyr always guilty unless its the butler_

**The Nut Job**  
_theres no gardener in the story so the alibis flawless_

**Irish Fairy**  
_is there a butler? if not the storys rubbish throw it under the bed to all ur bags with the victims. was gonna to take the trash out to the bins at some point anyway_

**The Nut Job**  
_whenr u back today?_

**Irish Fairy**  
_at 4 or 5. ish. gotta do sth after work today_

**Irish Fairy**  
_u want sth? ill buy it on my way to urs_

**The Nut Job**  
_nah got everything i need_

**Irish Fairy**  
_right_

**The Nut Job**  
_u seen nuns on the run?_

**Irish Fairy**  
_yeah why?_

**The Nut Job**  
_wanna watch again 2night?_

**Irish Fairy**  
_u bet_

* * *

The mysterious “something” Colin has to do after work is another audition. He doesn’t get his hopes high on that one but he has it on good authority (his agent) that they are looking for someone of roughly his type. And he does almost run into a guy leaving the studio – a tall thin guy with a mop of quite unruly dark hair.

The guy has the advantage of much neater ears than Colin’s own, though. 

Colin smiles stepping into the studio. It’s stuffy in here and three people sitting at the desk in the far end look annoyed and tired. 

Colin lets out about eighty kittenwatts, and the grumpy faces in front of him lighten involuntarily just a bit. 

“Good afternoon,” he says. “I’m Colin, Colin Morgan,” he reminds. “Let’s start auditioning me?” he looks at them in askance, much more hopeful and nervous than he’s willing to let on even to himself. 

There’s always a chance. A starting actor never knows what his star role is; he’s looking for it like a wolf for his prey and each time he misses he only becomes hungrier and it goes on until he gives up or gets it. Many give up. Even more are still looking. 

Some make it. 

“Let’s do it, especially since you’re so eager,” the man in the middle smirks at him and gives him several pages. “I’ll be feeding you Sally’s lines.” 

Colin takes the pages feeling his guts tighten and knot so much that it hurts. He knows the general outline of the character but he sees the actual words for the first time and he looks them through quickly trying to put some emotions and characterization into them even before he actually understands what they mean. 

“A few days ago, I go into the toilets. Tony and Gary were in there. They're butt naked, Tony has Gary by his hair – like this – He's just doin' him. Doggy style... And Tony's like, "Ooo who's your daddy? I'M your daddy! I'm BIG daddy! Oh! Oh yeah, you like that? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm daddy cooool!" So I'm guessing they ran away to continue their illicit homosexual affair. And I ask you, in this world of intolerance and prejudice, who are – WHO are WE to condemn them?” 

Well, Colin is not into the habit of judging anybody, especially a fictional character, by their first words (maybe only a little bit), but he’s sure these ones are, if nothing, memorable.

* * *

By the end of the film Bradley’s plaster is decorated with the words “God is like a shamrock” and a picture of shamrock done with a purple felt-tip pen – a very schematic one because Colin may have many talents but drawing isn’t really one of them even if they paused the film to Google shamrock for Colin to have a model. Nonetheless, Bradley seems satisfied with the result.

“Write something else,” he suggests. “There’s plenty of space.” 

Colin snorts and after a moment’s thought writes: “Carpe diem.” Blame the films for whatever verbal shit they leave stuck in his head; if it goes on like it does, after these two months the plaster will be covered with quotes fully. Maybe he needs to buy more felt-tip pens to provide some colour variety. 

“I approve of your choice,” Bradley says reading what Colin wrote. “Why did you remember it?” 

“Dunno,” Colin puts the pen away and sits up opposite Bradley. There are plates on the bed between them and Colin picks up an apple that one of them started eating half an hour ago. He can’t remember who it was, Bradley or himself, and after some contemplation he decides it doesn’t matter. “I was just hoping to catch something important today, I guess.” 

“An audition?” Bradley cocks his head to the side. 

Colin bites the apple which has already partly gone brown. 

“Bingo. I don’t know if they pick me in the end, there are plenty of others, you know. They’ll call my agent when they are done with the whole casting thing.” 

“The point of the acting job, innit?” Bradley takes a bottle of juice from the cupboard and makes a sip not bothering to use a cup. “Keeps you on your toes.” 

“The point of the acting job is acting,” Colin rolls his eyes and slips away from the bed. The room is stuffy and he opens the window. Humid cold wind fills the room almost immediately and Bradley sneezes. 

It’s dark already, and Colin still has dishes to do and some laundry to conduct. Also, he needs to cook something for Bradley, at least make sandwiches because tomorrow he works all day long. Bradley has loads of Mary Stewart and Tennison to read but he can’t live off the food for mind and soul only, can he. 

He starts collecting plates and cups all of which are way too numerous for two people. Bradley pulls the duvet over his shoulders and watches Colin for some time before saying: 

“Stay the night.” 

“What?” 

“It’s late, and it’s going to rain if I know anything about London weather. You wanna catch a cold instead of a role? Besides, there’s a couch in the living-room, and there’s lots of spare sheets and blankets.” 

“There’s no second pillow.” 

“I’ll give you mine,” Bradley offers. “Come on, stay. Or do you have a cat you gotta feed tonight?” 

“Nope, no cat. Not even a single cockroach, to be honest.” 

Colin takes the dishes to the kitchen and starts washing them. Bradley doesn’t speak again probably knowing he won’t be heard distinctly over the sound of running water and the silence gives Colin a moment to think on the offer. 

It’s not like he’ll die without a pillow, not really. It’s staying here with Bradley. Colin is far from thinking that one of them is actually an axe-murderer or that something… unexpected will happen. They are mates, good ones for that matter, and staying over is perfectly justified. It’s just that there’s something disturbing in the idea, as if listening to Bradley toss and turn and snore (does he snore?) in the next room is another step to something unknown to Colin and big and terrifying, just like agreeing to take care of Bradley was a step to it. Colin doesn’t know the destination point and he’s trying to figure out if he wants to covering the dishes with lemon-smelling foam. The wind comes to the kitchen from the living-room and crawls under Colin’s baggy jeans making his hair stand on its end. 

He hears Bradley sneezing again and rushes with the washing to come back to the room as soon as possible and close the window. 

The air in the room smells like wet foliage and car exhaust. The lights are still off and Bradley’s hidden in the shadows and the cloth of the duvet, his hair and eyes the only parts of him eerily bright and shiny in the scarce light from the kitchen on the far end of the corridor. 

“If you snore, I may smother you in your sleep,” Colin warns trying to go for threatening, but Bradley grins widely, his teeth white in the twilight. “I have to get up early.” 

“Deal,” Bradley says and licks his lips. “I wonder if…” 

“If what?” 

“If you could help me get to the bathroom? I, well, got there myself during the day, I held onto the wall, but it’s damn difficult now, and I’m tired…” 

“I’ll get crutches for you tomorrow,” Colin interrupts and takes the duvet off Bradley’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you there. You may as well brush your teeth, by the way.” 

Colin stands outside the closed bathroom door for a few seconds not knowing if he should stay here and therefore listen to Bradley doing what people do in bathrooms in case he slips, falls, and breaks something else besides the leg. But this is really creepy, and Colin decides that Bradley falling would be heard in every corner of the not so big flat and goes to find clean sheets for himself and do the couch. 

The couch is not very comfortable but, then again, Bradley’s flat is not a five-star hotel. Colin curls under his slightly dusty blankets and tries to fall asleep. As it usually happens, trying leads to the exact opposite result – he’s never felt so awake in his entire life and he just stares at the ceiling hoping that sleep will come to him at some point. 

“Are you asleep?” asks Bradley from the bedroom. 

“No,” Colin states the obvious. “What did you want to hear as an answer anyway?” 

“Exactly what I’ve heard, actually,” Bradley’s voice gives away a smile. 

“Alright, what did you want to talk about?” Colin gives up on sleep and sits up. 

Bradley doesn’t say anything for awhile. 

“Ah, erm… do you want to go to the bathroom?” Colin tries to guess. “Just a second, I’m getting up…” 

“No,” Bradley interrupts him hastily. “Not at all. Hm, thanks, but no. I just… wanted to talk.” 

“Oh,” Colin says. “What’s on your mind at this ungodly hour, then?” 

It’s not strictly an ungodly hour, it’s around midnight, but Colin is tired and he does have to get up early tomorrow for a whole day of work and caretaking. 

“Tell me a story.” 

“What?” 

“A story.” 

“What, like, to read you a story? About, I dunno, Snow White and the seven dwarfs or about the Red Riding Hood?” 

“Not that kind of story, you dick. I know all of them by heart like every kid with decent parents, what kind of lame suspense would they be? I meant, a story of yours. Tell me about yourself.” 

“Basically, what you are saying is that you were lying in your bed in the middle of the night and thinking about me?” 

“Put it the way you like.” Bradley snorts and Colin feels a rather passionate wish to swat him on the head with the pillow. If he couldn’t fall asleep on it, he could at least make some use of it. “I just want to know more about you. Tell me something. Anything. I don’t ask for an embarrassing story, only for a true one.” 

“When a freshman at the drama school, I freaked out about those practical seminars that one of our professors loved,” Colin says. “He took us out, and we had to play this sketch of a role or that in public. Everyone who lived in the area knew his face and knew what to expect when there were nervous students by his side. Well, that day I had to be a guy who comes over a table at a street café, asks for a lighter, and suddenly falls over in a fit of some kind. We knew some of the tasks beforehand, I read all I could find about fits, epilepsy, everything, and practiced at the hostel in front of my neighbours who thought I was doing fine. But I was still nervous as hell, I just wasn’t used to doing something like that in public, and as I was approaching a table at random all I could think of was if I needed to pee in my pants to make the fit look convincing or if that would be over the top.” 

Colin hears Bradley’s muffled giggling as though he doesn’t want to interrupt the story with comments and laughter but can’t help himself. He must be waiting for the punchline, Colin thinks, then he’ll unleash his delight unbound. 

“I never approached the table I picked,” Colin continues. “I tripped over someone’s bag, or umbrella, or some other treacherous everyday thing. I tried to grab whatever I could in order not to fall, but I only managed to knock down another table together with a chair. A little girl was sitting on that chair. She fell; bruised her arm and scratched her cheek, but otherwise she was fine. Well, scared and in pain, yes, but generally fine. Her mother slapped me on the face which, I think, was pretty understandable, and promised to sue me when she made sure her daughter was alright. I don’t know, maybe she’d do that, and I’d still be paying her money for my clumsiness, but the girl stopped crying by that time and asked if I was hurt. I scratched my elbows and palms; it looked nasty but didn’t leave scars afterwards. She tried to console me, and her mother calmed down seeing that, and in a few minutes they were both helping me up while I was saying sorry for the millionth time. The professor never let me live it down, even though no other… outing of mine turned into such a fiasco.” 

Bradley doesn’t laugh and doesn’t say anything. Apparently, he expected a different punchline. 

“You didn’t ask for a funny story,” Colin reminds. “Only for a true one.” 

“No, I didn’t. Yet it’s curious that you chose this one to tell me, not something funny.” 

Colin shrugs forgetting for a moment that Bradley can’t see him. 

“Truth isn’t always funny. I just felt like telling you something that didn’t really cast me in a favourable light. I think.” 

I felt like trusting you with a story of stupidity and humiliation, he adds silently. 

“Goodnight,” he says and lies back down. The pillow smells like Bradley’s herbal shampoo and cleanliness and Colin presses his face into it. 

“Goodnight, fairy,” echoes Bradley. 

Colin falls asleep at some point listening to the restless rustling of Bradley’s sheets and duvet.

* * *

At the end of the day Colin is knackered. He has guided through _Shalott_ a bunch of students who appeared determined to get on with their reading but, it turned out, couldn’t be arsed to remember the names of the required writers they needed correctly – as if the names of most of those writers weren’t obscure enough without confusing all the vowels in them. Seriously, after that particular encounter Colin has to look it up in the Wikipedia to make sure there are only six blasting vowels in the English language because it was hard to believe that a person can make such a huge mess out of such a small amount of them.

Also, he’s been texting Bradley all day long as Bradley seemed to be bored out of his mind despite the books and DVDs he has at his disposal within an arm’s reach, where Colin has carefully put them. Colin doesn’t mind texting Bradley – he loves it, if he’s honest with himself, but that makes him strangely giddy, and the day passes in a blur of customers and texts and the database to which he’s truly tried to pay attention. And he winces every time his phone vibrates because it might be his agent calling him to say that he’s landed the role or that he hasn’t but it’s only ever Bradley and Colin’s nerves are really frayed around the edges by the time he closes the shop and inhales the cold damp air deeply in an attempt to clear his mind. 

He chooses to pop into the coffeshop where Katie works tonight. He could do with a sugar overdose and some caffeine before he goes over to Bradley’s to clean up the flat and do all other things he’s signed up to do. 

It’s not like he wishes to back off. He just needs a distraction to let his brain switch from one activity to another. Colin has it all planned many steps ahead; he can function well as long as he has a clear view on what exactly he has to do at every given moment. 

Maybe that is why he chose the acting career though he could try something else. Isn’t it the extreme point of having a clear view, when you’ve got a script which says what you say, where you go, what you do, what you look like while doing all of the above? 

When he enters the coffeshop, he sees the twins at the corner table. Katie greets him with a “Hello, long time no see” muffled by a yawn. She’s tired too, and there are shadows under her eyes. 

“Hi,” he says. The twins are busy doing a crossword; they are so absorbed with it as though it’s the most important thing in the world. 

They look complete, one person in two, their movements synchronized and their concentrated frowns matching perfectly. Colin suddenly feels very weak, and helpless, and lonely, like a child whose mindless parents lost him in a multi-storied shopping centre. 

“My usual,” he tells Katie. 

“You haven’t been here for almost week,” she points out getting on with his order. “You’re lucky you haven’t made it longer, I’ve started to forget what your usual is.” 

“It’s been a busy week. Like, very busy.” 

He doesn’t feel like sharing the details, and Katie rarely insists on him telling her what he’d rather keep to himself. 

“Landed a role somewhere?” she asks. 

“What?” 

She’s not supposed to know he’s a starting actor too. He never told her, he never wanted anyone to know and pity him for being one more loser in the enormous crowd of losers trying to make it but not able to break through. 

His secrets, however, seem to decide for him who they want to be known to these days. 

“Don’t play the dumbo card,” she rolls her eyes. “I’ve been watching _Doctor Who_ this week because I think David Tennant is cute and saving the universe makes him even cuter, and guess who I’ve seen in the _Midnight_ episode? Emo outfit, snarky comments, weird name with an interdental in the middle – ring any bells?” 

“Well, it was me, alright.” He puts the money for the coffee on the counter. “What of it, then? Did you like my performance so much that now you want an autograph?” 

He’s being rude, he knows that. But he doesn’t know what is there in keeping his life to himself to feel guilty about, and he feels guilty and he doesn’t want to, and Katie is surely the one to blame, isn’t she? 

“Don’t be an arsehole with me, Colin Morgan,” Katie’s accent grows more Irish, and it means she’s really pissed. “I just wondered why the hell you never bothered to tell me you were an actor too while I was blathering on and on about my own ambitions.” 

“I’m not an actor, strictly speaking,” he bites his lower lip. What he needs the least is an exhausting unpleasant talk right now. He feels his head starting to ache and takes a sip of coffee hoping that the sugar will hit his blood and make the pain stop. “Jethro’s part is the only one on TV I ever got. I work in a bookstore, end of story.” 

“What, are you telling me you consider a breathtaking career of a bookseller with tiny wages and no prospects whatsoever so much better than acting that you’ve never looked for another opportunity?” 

“Look, what do you want from me now?” Colin looks Katie in the eye. Her very, very indignant eye. “Okay, I was a prick hiding that I desperately want to be an actor as well. I’m sorry. I really am. But I’ve been working today since nine a.m. without a break and I have this friend with a broken leg I’m taking care of, and I really have to come to him and see how he’s doing, so what do you want? Just tell me, please.” 

“Piss off, you dickhead,” she says but her words lack the real heat now. 

“I am a dickhead,” Colin agrees and flashes a hundred of kittenwatts at her. They are sure to stop her from spitting into his coffee or doing something equally spiteful when she gathers her anger again at some point later. Katie is the one to hold a grudge for years if she deems it necessary. “But you still love me, McGrath.” 

She sighs helplessly like he’s her younger brother who did some stupid shit again but she, indeed, loves him no matter how big an idiot he is. 

“You’ll make it soon,” Colin says. “You’re perfect for historics, and there’s an audition for a Channel 4 historic docudrama next week. You may end up a princess in that one, who knows? Find out the exact time, date, and place, and nail it.” 

He smiles, salutes her with his cup – in which the coffee has probably already gone tepid instead of decently hot – and turns away from the counter to head for the door. It’s only now that he notices the double scrutinizing look the twins are giving him. 

Oh, hell. Let the cat out of the bag.

* * *

Bradley tunes into Colin’s quite foul mood immediately – Colin doesn’t have to say anything apart from “Hi” for Bradley to give him a measuring look, nod and start to fiddle with his mobile phone. Colin is grateful for the tactfulness all the time while he washes the dishes and makes a quick dinner of a salad and a couple of steaks for Bradley. When he’s back into the room with a bucket and a mop, ready to defeat all and every dusticle which would be so stupid as to stand up to him tonight, Bradley’s still busy with the phone. It looks like he’s texting to someone; long texts full of some kind of information. Colin rolls up his sleeves and splashes the wet mop onto the floor trying to guess who could that be on the receiving end of Bradley’s texts.

He knows that Bradley has a whole life which has never included Colin. It could be anyone. His teammate, his childhood friend, his sibling (does he have brothers or sisters?), his axe-murdering accomplice who is impatient to terrorize the city all over again. Ha ha. 

Colin isn’t really familiar with the concept of jealousy; he’s used to sharing things and he’s never wanted anyone in his life strongly enough not to respect their right for privacy. He wants privacy for himself, it’s only fair if he gives it to other people as well; especially since it’s easy. Right now, though, he understands what the Blue Beard’s wife must have felt opening the forbidden door: the urge to know, to be a part of what’s kept private is itching inside Colin. He fights it working over the floor so hard that the mop screeches suspiciously. Colin feels Bradley’s surprised look on his back like a touch. 

Bradley can have a sodding girlfriend or a boyfriend for all Colin knows. He made jokes about himself and Colin kissing and dating like a free bloke would, yeah, but jokes aren’t called jokes for nothing, they are something to be laughed at and forgotten. 

Colin imagines Bradley calling another person; anyone, really. This Anyone in Colin’s imagination is faceless and their body doesn’t have a definite shape but it’s big and kind of looming. The Anyone visits Bradley while Colin is at work, and chats with him, and helps him to get to the bathroom, and picks films to watch together, and makes him tea, and does thousands of other things that Colin does when he’s finally back. 

He imagines Bradley smiling sheepishly and adoringly at the Anyone, and he doesn’t even understand at once that the hot nauseating pang inside him is jealousy. 

Idiot, Colin tells himself. Fucking maniac, you want him not to talk to anybody else, or what, lock him up in the basement? 

No, he thinks lying down on his stomach to gather all the dust from under the bed, I just want to be a part of it. A part of everything that’s Bradley. 

Oh God, Colin thinks, stunned mid-movement, I actually do. 

He doesn’t like the discovery all that much. 

Bradley touches Colin’s lower back; not having expected that, Colin shivers, it’s a full-body deep shiver that almost makes him hit the underside of the bed with his head. 

“You alright down there? You haven’t moved for half a minute, you’re not asleep, are you?” 

“You overestimate the degree of comfort of your floor,” Colin replies. There’s a single sock under his elbow and Colin looks around for the other. “I’m just thinking, that’s all.” 

“What is it?” 

Bradley’s phone chimes with a new text. Colin gathers all the dust which hasn’t been collected with the mop onto himself, but the damn sock is nowhere to be found. 

“Who are you texting?” 

“It’s just my sister, asking what I’m up to and if she can have a picture of me in plaster,” Bradley sounds a tad confused. “I can turn the sound off if it irritates you.” 

“No, it’s okay.” Colin gives up on the second sock, grabs the first one, and starts wriggling on his elbows and knees trying to get out of his under-the-bed shelter backwards. He bumps his shoulder into the bed frame once but it’s fine, there won’t even be a bruise. “What are you up to, then?” 

“Actually, I thought of asking you to help me wash my hair.” Bradley looks nervous and flushed saying that. “I haven’t washed them since the day you and mum helped me get back here, and they are dirty already. But I gotta get to the bathroom, I think I can handle it from that point, but…” 

“Sure.” Colin isn’t sure why Bradley looks so embarrassed asking this when he is already used to asking Colin help him to the bathroom when he needs to do much more intimate things that washing his hair. Maybe there’s some trick somewhere in the request but Colin can’t see it. “Just a second, I… I’ll wrap this up,” he gestures to the floor and the bucket. 

“Yeah, of course.” 

Colin finishes with the floor quickly, and puts the shampoo on the edge of the bath for Bradley, and turns the water on, and moves over the stool which is kept in the bathroom so that it would be most convenient to sit on it and wash one’s hair. 

“Thanks,” Bradley says when he’s all seated and taken care of. “I’ll get on with it, then.” 

That’s a clear dismissal, Colin knows one when he sees one, but he has to check if they have any toothpaste left on the shelves or if he has to buy more tomorrow. It won’t take a minute and he actually wants the check done while he remembers, and not when they are totally out of any toothpaste whatsoever, especially considering that Bradley likes it fancy and freaky – like, he prefers black toothpaste to the regular white and he is very enthusiastic about exotic tastes, more so than is healthy in Colin’s opinion. 

“Sure, don’t mind me, I’ll be out in a moment.” 

Bradley nods curtly and leans down to pour the water from the shower on his head. 

Some of the water goes right to the stool, and in a second Bradley’s soaked through; he tries to turn it away but the stool is now slippery and Bradley moves too swiftly. Colin catches him on the shoulders before he falls but only barely so. 

“I got you,” Colin exhales into Bradley’s wet hair, adrenaline kicking in only now because it has all been so rush. “You fine?” 

“Yes,” Bradley sounds strangled; rather far from fine. “Yes, I’m ok. Let me go, please.” 

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Colin lets him go – slowly, to see if Bradley starts falling again – and he’s truly astonished when Bradley’s hands close over his wrists and squeeze, knuckles white, dull pain flaring from under them immediately. “Ouch, Bradley, what are you…” 

“No,” Bradley spits, bitter and angry, and Colin thinks mutely that he may have an idea what and why Bradley’s doing. “No, I’m not sure, I’m not fine, I can’t fucking handle it! I broke my goddamn leg if you haven’t noticed and now I’m totally – completely – absolutely – fucking useless!” 

Bradley pulls Colin to himself with sudden strength; he presses his forehead into Colin’s solar plexus and breathes erratically, in, out, short ragged hot breaths. Colin puts his arms around Bradley’s shoulders because it can be the best thing to do right now – just be here for him and not let go. 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Bradley starts crying – and no one can say Bradley doesn’t have a reason to do that – but, much to Colin’s relief, Bradley just holds on for dear life and breathes. 

“It’s going to be fine,” he whispers to Bradley’s hunched body. He feels the heat, the unsteady heartbeat, the solid alive weight of Bradley, impossibly real like a dream which comes true and lets you touch it. “I promise. If the football’s no longer an option, we’ll figure it out anyway after you’ve healed properly. You’ll be doing something else you like, and I’ll help you. You have my word, you silly nut job, do you hear me? I’ll be there for you. And it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fucking brilliant.” 

He doesn’t realise he’s the one crying until Bradley raises his hand to wipe off a tear from his cheek. He closes his eyes briefly and leans into the touch. 

He knows, he has no right to be vulnerable and hurt here, it’s Bradley who needs consolation and reassuring touches and not him, an idiot with all his limbs intact and so many personal issues he could be carrying them around in a big suitcase. 

But he wants to nuzzle Bradley’s palm with his cheek so badly and he lets himself do just that for a few fleeting seconds. 

“If it’s going to be so fucking brilliant, why are you crying?” Bradley asks, and there’s a hint of a smile in his voice. His grip on Colin’s wrist loosens and turns tender, tentative instead of almost brutal. 

Colin opens his eyes to see Bradley’s, bright and shockingly blue like sea water touched by sunlight, with wide irises and uneven wet eyelashes. 

“The brilliance is so bright it’s blinding,” he says and smiles not counting how many kittenwatts he lets out. Probably all of them, unimaginable billions of kittenwattage yet unseen, but he doesn’t care. 

“I’d like to see that for myself,” Bradley says. 

“You will,” Colin promises again. The promises are like anchors keeping him by Bradley’s side and he drops them into the water of the conversation in abundance. 

Bradley nods as though he believes every word of Colin’s.

* * *

Bradley still washes his hair after that; Colin lingers at the bathroom door pretending to be doing something else but in fact just keeping an eye on Bradley for his own safety.

It goes alright, without a single incident. 

Colin helps Bradley back to the bedroom where he has changed the sheets, brushes his teeth, takes off his jeans but leaves his t-shirt on so that he doesn’t sleep naked. 

“Goodnight,” he says standing in the doorway. 

Bradley looks up from a book he’s holding. 

“Yeah, goodnight.” 

“Erm… ok.” Colin turns to go away but stops to look back. “I meant everything I said there, you know. I still do.” 

“I know,” Bradley agrees, so calm now that Colin would never think it’s the same person who held his wrists in iron fists and seemed shattered to pieces about an hour ago. “Thanks for that, fairy.” 

“I have a name, you know,” Colin mutters without any real hope to get Bradley to call him “Colin”. “You’re welcome, nut job.” 

Bradley laughs at Colin’s proudly straightened back.

* * *

By Saturday evening Colin finds that he has already established a routine. Work, shopping, Bradley, housework duties, Bradley, some film, Bradley again, sleep on the couch in the living-room. He’s practically abandoned his own flat which honestly doesn’t need much maintaining and only visits it once a day or two to check his e-mail and grab some fresh clothes. Slowly but surely, all of his stuff moves to Bradley’s, and sometimes Colin checks his e-mail using Bradley’s laptop because it’s easier and it’s no trouble for anyone.

It happens fast and Colin likes it the way it is, breathtaking and unstoppable like a ride on a rollercoaster. 

You can’t very well jump out of a rollercoaster while it’s moving, right? Even if you are scared out of your mind, secretly you’re loving every second of it. 

Unless you are prone to sea-sickness, that is. Colin, however, has always been proud of his iron stomach so it’s the least of his worries. 

The most significant of those is that any rollercoaster stops sooner or later, and Colin doesn’t know what will happen when this one stops and he has to go back to the ground and dive deep into the life he has left behind for the sake of the brief overwhelming joy of riding. 

He tries not to think of it. 

This evening they spend together as usually. They lie on Bradley’s bed and watch random episodes of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ because Bradley loves this show and Colin is content enough with his giant bowl of salad for dinner and the action on the screen not to feel the need to understand who is who and what it is that connects all these strange people. 

“What would you like to do if you weren’t a footballer?” Colin asks. 

They haven’t discussed that after the bathroom incident but Colin feels free enough with Bradley to ask personal questions. He wouldn’t mind even if Bradley asked him one, he’s so pleased with life at this very moment. 

“Dunno,” Bradley says as if it’s the most natural thing for Colin to ask – and maybe it is, who’s to be the judge of that apart from Bradley himself, after all. “I thought of acting once but I’d be a rubbish actor, I think. I never actually thought further than that. Well, I can always sell coffee or deliver post, something like that.” 

“I think you could do better than that,” Colin says. 

He touches Bradley’s arm waiting for rejection of the gesture but it never comes and he wraps his fingers tightly around Bradley’s shoulder. His pinky finger is on bare skin while all the others are on the t-shirt sleeve. He relishes in the distinct difference of the skin and the cloth texture, the warmth, the steady real presence of Bradley so close to him. 

“I always wanted to study something, you know,” Bradley says thoughtfully. “I like reading. Maybe I could do history at some uni and work part-time to make ends meet. And dig out something sensational and get the Nobel Prize, that sort of thing.” 

Colin laughs softly – not because this sounds ridiculous but because it sounds frighteningly close to reality, closer than Bradley himself may think. 

“Do they give the Nobel Prize for history? I never knew.” 

“You think it’s the only thing that stops me from getting it – that they might not be giving it on general principle?” Bradley laughs too. 

“Yeah, I think so,” says Colin sincerely. “Which period do you like best, then? You gotta concentrate on something in particular, there’s a lot of history over the years.” 

“The beginning of the twentieth century, I guess,” Bradley bites his lips, all serious as if he’s talking not to Colin but to his hypothetical future uni tutor. “I loved that Isherwood, you know. I love Wodehouse, and lots of others who wrote about that crazy time between the wars. You know, the old life falling apart, the new life not having come yet, and everyone lives like they are having a feast in the middle of a plague pandemia, and everything looks like a patchwork quilt where all patches are from different items, from a dirty diaper to an embroidered napkin.” 

He stops talking and looks up, sheepish and clearly embarrassed. 

“I’m talking rubbish here, am I not? I didn’t even have all As in History at school, what am I going to do at uni? I can’t even tell when exactly Napoleon left Moscow and if he left it because he was bored or maybe the Russians kicked him out.” 

“Lucky for you then,” Colin says, “that you’re not going to sink your teeth into Napoleon, eh?” 

Bradley laughs loudly, throwing his head back, and Colin laughs too, something tight and warm curling inside his chest. 

“I’d love to be the first to read your final thesis,” he says without thinking all that much about his words. “I bet you’ll need someone to salvage your punctuation and cross out words like ‘rubbish’ and ‘kick out’.” 

“You would?” Bradley asks, his eyes wide open. 

It was a joke, Colin thinks almost panicking, wasn’t it? 

“I would,” he nods and hides his goddamn blush turning his full attention to the salad in his bowl. 

His phone rings ruining the silence. He fishes it out of his pocket almost dropping it into the salad and hurries to pick up before the person on the other end – whoever it is – is tired of waiting. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi, Colin.” It’s his agent. Colin feels his guts tightening in a nervous knot. “How are you? Even if you’re miserable out there, I’ve got something to cheer you up.” 

“Which is?” Colin prompts. 

“You got it,” she says. “Congratulations, darling; you’re one of the leads of _Misfits_ now. Check your e-mail, there should be a copy of the script waiting for you. Make sure you know which lines are yours and all that.” 

“Thank you, Ruth.” Colin wants to sound bright and polite but his voice is caught somewhere in the middle of his throat and he can only whisper. 

“You’ve got yourself to thank for that, no one else, to be honest. Congratulations, again. E-mail me about the details on Monday, will you?” 

Colin promises he’ll do that and hangs up. 

“Who was it?” Bradley asks. 

Colin smiles so widely his face might crack into two halves. 

“You landed that role, didn’t you?” Bradley guesses. “The one earlier this week, something about an antisocial lovely nutcase with superpowers? Right?” 

“I did!” Colin pumps the air, he’s so happy, happiness fills him from the inside like a big rainbow bubble. “I fucking got it, I did it, God, they picked me!” 

“Congratulations, mate!” Bradley smiles. “You’re so unbelievably awesome, you know that?” 

Bradley is still smiling, softly and admiringly, so truly, really glad for Colin. His own mother would probably be less glad for him because she doesn’t like him landing roles so rarely and hints at some other possible career choices. Bradley has no such doubts, it seems; he smiles like Colin’s success is one of the most important and wonderful things in the world, and he is so perfectly, flawlessly, painfully beautiful at this moment, even more so than when he stepped into _Shalott_ for the first time, curious, confused, enthusiastic, open. 

He is happy because Colin is happy, and Colin is even happier seeing Bradley happy, and it feels like some kind of vicious circle but it also feels right like puzzles clicking into the right places with each other. 

That’s probably the most amazing thing about Bradley, Colin thinks and understands all of a sudden: he wants to kiss Bradley. In celebration, in gratitude, in admiration, in sheer joy of having him here all to himself with the rest of the world shut out by the locked door of the flat. 

He wants to kiss Bradley like he’s never wanted to kiss anybody else. Well, there has never been a Bradley in his life before. 

Maybe it’s not all so sudden as it seemed a moment ago. 

Oh shit. 

Shit shit shit, Colin thinks and jumps off the bed hurriedly to collect the dirty dishes and take them to the kitchen.

* * *

There are three main things for Colin to do this Sunday afternoon: print out the script for the first episode – he can’t wait until they send a paper copy, he absolutely can’t, ¬– pick up crutches for Bradley from a firm that rents them out along with other medical things, and do some grocery shopping. It doesn’t look like a great list of things to do but it takes time and Colin comes back around four.

“Hey, I’m back,” he calls out closing the door after himself. “Got you the crutches. You’ll be able to defend yourself now every time I try to beat you up with a pillow!” 

With these words he enters the bedroom and his smile is frozen on his face because there is someone else with Bradley sitting on the edge of his bed and drinking tea. 

It’s a guy. A really fit one and good-looking. And he smiles at Colin slyly like they share some kind of secret. 

His teeth are nor pearly-white but they look well-cared of, and he’s blond and shiny like a doll or a Hollywood star. Colin lets his smile transform into a kittenwatt-less one. 

“Sorry, I didn’t know Bradley had a guest. Hello?” 

“Cols, that’s Ben, my teammate. Hoping to get a place on the team too, like all of us newbies are.” Bradley looks like there’s nothing wrong about the situation, and then again, there isn’t. “Ben, this is Colin.” 

“Nice to meet you,” they say simultaneously. 

Ben looks at Colin hesitantly, evidently trying to figure out who Colin is. Bradley hasn’t said anything to clarify his status, so Colin may be a friend – or even something more, may be a relative, a hired help, anyone. 

Colin lets himself think for a moment if this lack of definition for him means that Bradley isn’t sure about it himself. 

“So, who are you, Colin?” Ben asks, unable to hold off his curiosity. “Bradley never mentioned you if I recall correctly…” 

“He could hardly do that,” Colin gives Bradley credit for that. “We’ve met pretty recently. As for me, well, I am many things, really. Here in this flat I’m a fairy who waves his magic wand and makes Bradley happy. That sort of thing. Wanna some biscuits with your tea? I’ve just bought a pack with orange marmalade.” 

This is a stupid reply. A rude, ambiguous, and highly unnecessary one as well. 

Well, at least he’s had the decency to offer the biscuits. 

Ben leaves soon, without ever finding out who Colin actually is. Colin would like to know that himself and he’s determined to let Bradley take the lead for a change and make that decision. 

Maybe Bradley would like to kiss him too. Maybe not. Who knows what’s going on in his head? Colin certainly doesn’t. 

“Is anything wrong?” 

“Try these.” Colin hands the crutches over to Bradley. “I’ll go change them if they are uncomfortable or something.” 

“Fairy,” says Bradley, reproachful. 

An actor shouldn’t be too easy to read, Colin thinks. What a pile of soppy shit I am, he thinks. 

“Everything’s fine. It’s just, Ben’s visit caught me off guard. I thought it was only you here. Try them, really, that firm works only until five on Sundays.” 

It’s a cold sunny day and Colin wouldn’t actually mind an extra walk with an armful of crutches. It would clear his head. 

He helps Bradley up – touching his warm smooth skin is like a drug, and he squeezes a bit too strongly, just for the sake of touching – and watches him take his first true steps in days. 

“These things are cool,” Bradley declares once he learns how to coordinate his legs and the crutches and not to fall on his arse in the process. “You think I could learn to juggle them or throw like darts?” 

“Don’t throw them at the window,” Colin warns. “You’ll freeze your overactive ideas-seething arse off without that glass. Otherwise, why not?” 

No one Colin knows thinks crutches can replace darts or special juggling thingies (whatever those are called). This is not a problem for Bradley, though, and Colin has no logical reason to deny him this little joy. 

He wouldn’t probably deny Bradley anything. 

This is a scary thought and Colin stops thinking it and busies himself with putting all he bought onto the appropriate shelves.

* * *

The producers of Misfits are energetic people whose motto seems to be “no rest for the wicked” or something else conveying a similar message. The first read-through is on Thursday, and while Colin knows he doesn’t actually have to know all his lines by heart for a read-through – that’s why it includes the word “read”, after all – he can’t help but practice during every spare minute he gets until the words root into his brain and become a part of himself.

Colin doesn’t know what to expect at work, now that the twins know and tell everyone (there’s no way they wouldn’t do that), but nothing happens. Like, nothing at all, and it’s so disappointingly anticlimactic. The only thing that changes is that Helen is trying to trick him into telling her everything about his mysterious friend with a broken leg, but Colin gives her nothing more than a blush and a firm “do you think we need to restock _The Hunger Games_ or it can wait till the next month?” She tells him looking vengeful that he can bring his boyfriend over to the shop when his leg is healed and no, she reckons they don’t need to restock it this month. Also, Richard winks at Colin once and wishes him luck, and Colin doesn’t want to know if it’s about his hypothetical boyfriend or his hypothetical acting career. 

He’s completely fascinated with Nathan, his cute bastard of a character. Bradley is fascinated too, and he helps Colin practice feeding him all the other lines. They are doing it all the time when Colin isn’t doing the housework and they are not watching _Buffy_. They have watched a lot of this show so far and by Wednesday Colin can sincerely agree with Bradley that Buffy has the legs of a goddess and haircut like that of Sarah Jane Smith’s when she’s with the Fourth Doctor (there’s never been a nerdier nerd than Bradley, Colin decides after that but says nothing because in the matter of loving crappy crazy old sci-fi he really can’t be the one with the right to throw a stone), Giles is the coolest and the most awesome guy this Earth has ever seen and should never take off his glasses because they are damn smoking hot on him, Willow is a total badass in a shy girl disguise, and Xander is so not getting any with Buffy because she thinks he’s a buddy and a darling, not a potential boyfriend. Though half-way through the last statement Bradley starts explaining to Colin the storylines of all seven seasons, trying to avoid major spoilers and failing at that, and it all gets hopelessly tangled in Colin’s head. 

“Look,” Bradley says, his eyes shining maniacally, his hands gesturing wildly, “you don’t get it, Angel, he…” 

“He died and was resurrected five times, you’ve said that,” Colin nods. 

“Five? God, where did you get that from? No, not five, a lot less, actually…” 

“Less? So, it means _you_ ’ve told me about it five times and I’ve counted each one as a separate resurrection.” Colin pokes Bradley on the ribs none-too-gently and falls flat onto his back impersonating exhaustion itself. Bradley doesn’t seem to mind. 

“You’re hopeless,” he says affectionately as Colin curls against his side feeling the heat of his body through all the layers of clothing. “We’re watching more tomorrow.” 

“Have the read-through tomorrow,” Colin mutters. He’s warm, and cozy, and hazy hyphen lazy, and he lets himself just lie there; in a couple of minutes he has to get up, clean up the bed which is littered with dirty dishes once again, and make the couch for the night. He feels ten times more tired than he is just thinking of it, and he lets the unpleasant thought drift away and lets Bradley’s voice wash over him. 

“I know, but you’ll come home eventually,” Bradley says. “They can’t have you read day and night, can they? You’ll lose your voice because of all the overexertion and they’ll have to make your character mute and that really won’t do.” 

Colin snorts into the crook of his elbow and feels Bradley ruffle his hair affectionately. He’d protest but it’s nice, it’s all too nice to move and he only makes a grumpy grumbling sort of noise and doesn’t try to avoid the touch when Bradley traces the shell of his ear with his fingertip. 

Well, he would try to avoid that if he knew that this tiny touch would make at least half of the blood he has rush south. 

He isn’t sure what he’ll do if Bradley goes on touching his ear or, maybe – and that will be even worse – his neck, or any other part of Colin, if it comes to that. He also isn’t sure why Bradley’s doing that but he isn’t going to ask. 

“By the way,” Bradley says sounding really natural, “I thought you work both shifts on Thursdays?” 

“Yeah, I do,” Colin’s voice is hoarse and croaky but it could be blamed on the sleepiness. “Swapped shifts with Helen. Got her Saturday night one.” 

“You already have to make efforts to keep both of your jobs,” Bradley observes like the adorably annoying Captain Obvious that he is. “What will you do when the actual filming starts? There’s no way you can pull off both unless all the filming is going to take place at night which is not the case, I think.” 

“Smartass,” Colin mumbles, turning away from the TV which is too bright for his drooping eyes. “’ll take a vacation. M’be.” 

Bradley smells like clean cloth and Chinese spices, and a bit like something earthly and musky which Colin can’t quite place in his mind. 

Perhaps it’s Bradley himself. He’s bound to smell somehow, everyone has their unique smell, or dogs would never be able to follow a particular person’s scent. 

“Wake me up,” Colin asks because he’s falling asleep. 

“At seven a.m.? You have your alarm set, you don’t need me for that.” 

“No, in a couple of minutes,” he explains, and half of the phrase disappears in a yawn. He feels really tired, very content, and rather enjoyably aroused. He likes the cocktail of the feelings and likes lying beside Bradley and not on the couch which is alright but a bit too short for Colin’s six feet (and not an inch less). “The dishes.” 

“Ah, that,” Bradley says. “Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,” he says, and Colin thinks, what the hell he’s on about, and then recognizes William Blake. 

The recognition helps him relax and doze off – just a little, little bit – while Bradley recites the rest of the poem: 

“Dreaming o'er the joys of night;  
Sleep! sleep! in thy sleep  
Little sorrows sit and weep. 

Sweet Babe, in thy face  
Soft desires I can trace,  
Secret joys and secret smiles,  
Little pretty infant wiles…” 

Colin is sure there’s more to the poem than that but he can’t hear it as he falls asleep. He doesn’t doubt, however, that Bradley recites the thing to the very end dutifully whether or not he has an audience that is awake enough to listen.

* * *

He wakes up, and it’s still dark though there is some dull sunlight coming over the roofs of the houses opposite the window. He’s baffled by it for a moment because he sleeps on his couch with his head to the window and usually sees the living-room door when he wakes up, but then the realisation sinks in. He fell asleep on Bradley’s bed. With Bradley equally asleep beside him.

He sits up abruptly causing Bradley to stir. 

Bradley’s still wearing his worn shorts and T-shirt, and his plastered foot lies in the middle of the box with the Chinese takeaway leftovers. Oh nice, Colin thinks. The plaster is greasy now and it will stain the bed all over and Colin is the one who’ll have to change the sheets, because there’s no one else in this flat who’d be able to bend and tug not risking to damage the already broken leg. 

Not that it’s the most significant of his worries, that is. 

He has to crawl or step over Bradley to get out of the bed because he’s trapped between his sleeping… well, say friend, and the wall. He tries to do it stealthily, but Bradley inevitably wakes up. 

“Is it seven yet?” he asks blinking the sleep off of his eyes. 

“Not quite,” Colin gives up on the stealthy part and jumps to the floor with an audible thud, almost slipping and falling. His mouth tastes foul because he hasn’t brushed his teeth before going to bed and his shirt is crumpled irrevocably. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Good morning to you too.” Bradley props himself up on his elbows watching Colin. It makes Colin fidget nervously. “I bet it’s at least two hours before you have to get up. Why don’t you come back to bed? You’ve got a long day ahead.” 

“You have the bed all to yourself,” Colin suggests. “Two hours don’t matter anyway, I’ve got things to do.” 

“You’re freaking out again,” Bradley says. It’s not a question. “Do I kick in my sleep? It must be painful, with the plaster and all. I promise to behave, if that’s the case, and not break you anything.” 

“No,” Colin confesses, “you don’t kick at all.” 

“So it’s just because you slept with me in my bed, then,” says Bradley flatly, and if that doesn’t sound dirty and ambiguous, then Colin doesn’t know what the words mean. 

His mouth feels very dry when he repeats Bradley’s words in his mind, they roll over his whole body in ticklish hot waves and make his lower belly clench slowly and shamefully sweetly. 

“I… didn’t mean to break into your private space or anything…” 

“Is this your discreet and polite way of saying that it was actually me breaking into your private space and making you feel uncomfortable as I fell asleep next to you?” 

What’s not to be doubted is that Bradley is not the one for discreet and polite ways. Though if he can make a guess about such an elegant roundabout scheme, he’s not a lost cause in this respect yet. 

“You stupid nut job,” Colin says, his throat tight with bittersweet tenderness, and climbs back to bed, careful not to disturb Bradley’s plastered leg. 

They both don’t sleep after that, however. They lie side by side, the backs of their hands touching just barely so, and listen to each other breathing as the morning dawns.

* * *

The routine becomes something more like a second skin for Colin. He calls Bradley’s flat “home”, he thinks: “ _we_ are running out of butter and apples”, he learns that Bradley isn’t allergic to anything but hates not only porridge but tomatoes as well (which is good because Colin is allergic to them, and it looks like they fit in more ways than one, and it’s thrilling if not to say more), he knows every little corner of the flat as he cleans thoroughly it like he’s never cleaned his own one, he wins a couple of times when he and Bradley start talking in movie quotes to amuse each other and the first to fail to recall something cool and suitable loses. They also watch a lot of _Buffy_ in some twisted order unforeseen by the scriptwriters and producers (does this show have an end somewhere or does it just go on and on until the end of the world?), and Colin decorates Bradley’s plaster with quotes in green: “Don’t be sorry, be smart” and “Wasn't here, didn't see it, couldn't have stopped you”.

He hasn’t been to his own flat for two weeks, to think of it. He never has either time or a pressing need to come there. 

(Sometimes it’s like Bradley and life with Bradley have swallowed him whole and, contrary to the laws of nature, he hasn’t a single way out. He tries not to think of it too often because he rather likes being swallowed) 

They sleep in the same bed every night without any previous agreement on it, they just do. At first Colin thinks it’ll be uncomfortable, what with the sexual tension on Colin’s part and all, but it’s good. 

It feels safe and right. 

The hardest part – which is pretty unexpected – is the cooking. Colin likes it and he can proudly say that there isn’t a burnt vegetable mix or foul-smelling soup on his record, but he doesn’t know much about meat – without which Bradley can’t seem to be able to survive – and there’s also a question of variety. It’s one thing to make lunches and breakfasts for himself only, maybe the same things day after day because he doesn’t really care all that much about food, but Bradley likes different things. He likes his life surprising and new every second, and Colin suspects giving him the same stew two days in a row would be like kicking a puppy. It’s stupid, but Colin loves surprising Bradley, so every night when they don’t order a takeaway Colin takes over the kitchen being your regular part-time Jamie Oliver. 

Ever since Bradley’s learnt to walk around the flat on his crutches, he joins Colin in the kitchen. He always takes over half of the table with his elbows, laptop, and cup of tea, just like he does this time. 

“What are you doing there?” Colin asks when he hears unfamiliar sounds coming from the laptop. 

“Roaming Youtube. They have BBC’s _South Pacific_ , all parts.” 

“ _South Pacific_?” Colin echoes, lining the pie tin with neatly cut mushrooms. 

“Yeah. Just felt like watching some space. If I’m confined within four walls, I can at least watch some outdoor life.” Bradley flashes Colin a smile containing comparatively scarce amount of kittenwatts – Colin’d say, it’s not more than twenty or fifteen. 

“Yeah,” Colin agrees, covering the mushrooms with dough and adding grated soy cheese generously. “You can.” 

During the forty minutes that the pie takes to be ready Bradley watches some more of _South Pacific_ and squeezes loads of oranges into juice, and Colin chops up fresh vegetables and brings clean plates and glasses. They don’t speak of _South Pacific_ or confinements anymore, but Colin hears Bradley watching it again when he washes the dishes later on. 

At night he can’t fall asleep for a long time while Bradley is out like a light. Colin lies on his side watching Bradley’s peaceful face. He can barely make the features out in the darkness but he has them memorized anyway. 

He stretches his hand out and touches Bradley’s soft hair, lets his fingers slip along Bradley’s cheekbone to the corner of his lips. Sometimes Bradley drools in his sleep, but Colin doesn’t mind as long as Bradley doesn’t snore or kick or steal Colin’s blanket. 

Colin presses his hand as close to his chest as he can; there’s a strange tingling sensation in his fingertips after touching sleeping Bradley, like after getting a light electric shock or having his circulation cut off and then restored, and it won’t go away. 

He isn’t sure he wants it to go away.

* * *

It’s a quiet morning in _Shalott_. Colin alternates spending these blissful silent hours between working on his shamefully abandoned database and choosing something new for Bradley. It’s not that Bradley is dying of boredom without books from Colin – it’s just that Colin likes choosing them and then watch Bradley read as he sorts out the laundry or dusts the shelves or something. It’s soothing in a stabilizing kind of way. Each new rustle of a page overturned proves that Colin shares his life with Bradley now and Bradley likes it.

Somehow it’s very important, to please Bradley with the right choice of reading. 

This time Colin picks an old collection of Irish poems and fairy-tales; the volume is all worn with coppery-looking smooth cornerpieces, the paper is yellow and thick and rough to touch. Maybe this one would look better in a museum under bulletproof glass; or it could bring Shalott an obscene amount of money, should some rich book-lover pop in and see it. 

It has neither a price tag nor a few numbers of price written in pencil on the first page. Colin wonders if he should ask Richard how much it costs or if he’d better just put whatever reasonable amount of money he can afford into the cash register and not risk it ‘cause Richard may forbid him to take the book out of the shop. 

“Enjoying some light reading while you can?” asks Richard. 

Colin jumps from the unexpectedness of this and almost drops the book. 

“Erm… oh… I… I-I thought maybe I could buy it myself. For a friend, you know. He, well, he likes reading things. So I thought, well.” 

He shuts up before he says anything even more stupid. 

“The one with the broken leg, huh?” Richard says. He positively smirks, and Colin finds it unnerving as much as calming. 

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Colin confirms. “So, do you think I can? Take the book? I mean?” 

“Sure, you can. Whyever not?” 

“And… how much does it cost?” 

Richard looks at the book inquisitively as if expecting it to feel guilty and spit a price tag out of its depths. The book, however, doesn’t respond to such treatment. 

“I have no idea, my boy,” he says eventually. “You know what, why don’t we make it a gift? From _Shalott_ to a charming young man, with the wishes of a quickest recovery. When’s his birthday, anytime soon?” 

“It’s the 11th of October, and it’s February now… Are you sure?” Colin blinks. 

“Yes, I am.” Richard smiles. “Take it. Don’t think of money.” 

“Thank you,” Colin whispers. For some reason it’s suddenly hard to speak loudly, his throat doesn’t seem to be working well. 

“You’re welcome, my boy. Us, actors and booksellers, should help each other, should we not?” 

Colin sighs. 

“I’m… not an actor. Not really. I got a role, but it’s not necessarily that I’ll be the least bit famous after that or anything…” 

“Nonsense,” Richard interrupts. “I saw you acting. And if you don’t wake up with crowds of adoring fans on your doorstep the morning after the thing with you in it is released, then the world is blind, deaf, and stupid.” 

“I didn’t know you watched _Doctor Who_ ,” Colin mumbles. He doesn’t like hearing the compliments he doesn’t think he deserves, but he can’t very well tell Richard that he’s talking bullshit. It’d be way too rude. 

“Oh, but I don’t. Perhaps, I should buy a DVD? Which series are you in?” 

“Wait, you said you’d seen me acting. Where?” 

“Vernon God Little,” Richard winks at Colin. “The Young Vic. I recognized you the moment you stepped over the doorstep of _Shalott_.” 

“You did? Why didn’t you ever say anything?” 

“You never brought it up, and I thought it would be best for you to decide on your own which parts of your life you’d like to share with us.” Richard shrugs. “But after the twins came to work once with some rather exhilarating news, I considered keeping the secrets that are no longer hidden a tad pointless.” 

Colin snorts nervously. 

“I have this friend,” he says. “She didn’t know. Like, at all. She found out by accident and got really angry at me for lying. Aren’t you angry?” 

“Coimhead fearg fhear na foighde,” declaims Richard very seriously. 

Colin giggles, unable to resist this temptation. The mirth in Richard’s eyes and the phrase “Beware the anger of a patient man” in horrible Gaelic are just the right side of mortifyingly hilarious. 

“Why would I be angry?” Richard smiles. “You can do whatever you want with your life, I don’t get to decide anything – well, maybe only a little bit, like whether or not your young man will be able to read you something from this book with an even worse accent than mine.” 

“Is fearr Gaeilge briste, na Bearla cliste*,” Colin says, still stifling his inappropriate giggles. 

“Indeed it is,” agrees Richard. 

* Broken Irish is better than clever English (Gaelic).

* * *

Colin holds the entrance door open while Bradley is touching the ground tentatively with the tips of his crutches, as if refusing to believe that he’s so damn lucky that he gets to go outside after so many days of confinement.

“Go on,” Colin urges him. “It won’t bite you, I promise.” 

“Don’t trust a fairy who makes promises,” Bradley retorts with his poker-face on and steps over the doorstep, balancing the crutches nimbly. “You are known to charm and deceive, aren’t you?” 

“Yep, we’re wily like that, but we’re still totally irresistible like chocolate muffins, aren’t we?” Colin smiles, walking slowly a littlie behind Bradley and watching his back, ready to catch him if he slips and falls. It’s likely that a lot of people will slip today in the street, it’s been raining sketchily ever since Colin woke up this morning, and the pavement is wet. The whole world seems wet and pretty miserable, apart from Bradley – this one takes it upon himself to maintain the balance between the misery and the joy in the world, making up for the whole of London’s foul mood with his own puppy-like enthusiasm. 

“I think it’s disturbing that you compare yourself to food,” Bradley says and jumps right into the middle of a puddle. “Ha! Look, it’s splashing all around!” 

“I figured that much, thanks,” Colin mutters. A lot of this _surprisingly_ splashing – and also cold and dirty – water ended on his jeans. He can predict a Great Laundry Evening for tonight. Will be worth it, though. 

Bradley walks quickly – even if it’s not actually walking in the common sense of the word, it’s more like hopping around and flailing with the crutches dangerously. Colin follows Bradley, watching the tips of the latter’s ears grow red from cold and his hair stick up in complete disarray. When Bradley stops by a bench and turns back to Colin to say something like “this is _so_ freaking awesome, you know, I actually love this walking thing, do you think we could do it more often when you’re not busy?”, Colin can see his cheeks are flushed in a lighter, more tender shade of red and pink than his ears. Bradley is speaking and smiling at the same time, his joy popping out on the surface like a football in water, and there are kittenwatts, gazillions of them, probably, Colin can’t count them even approximately because they shine from Bradley’s lips and reflect in his eyes, his hair, the incessant, maddening raindrops all around them, and Bradley’s voice is zoned out somehow by the sound of rain hitting Bradley’s and Colin’s jackets softly, and, basically, there’s nothing and no one else in the world but Bradley. 

Colin thought before it must feel like a struck of lightning or something equally dramatic. On the contrary, it feels peaceful and happy and very-very right. It’s not shocking, it’s how it should be, and Colin has happened to only just discover that it should. It’s like when you read a detective story without a clue as to who’s the murderer (especially if there’s no gardener or butler in it), and when you learn the name, the little facts and hints that were all over the text get back at you and start making perfect sense together. 

Well, it’s not like this is about murder now, not really. This is rather about life, Colin reckons. His and Bradley’s one. Their… one. 

“Hey, Cols, are you listening to me?” Bradley clicks his fingers in front of Colin’s face, trying to attract some attention to whatever it is that he’s saying. He’s swaying dangerously on the crutches now that he’s got one hand free, but he doesn’t seem inclined to fall, at least not yet. “I was saying, do you want a coffee? Because if you do, we could totally walk to somewhere a smidge drier than here and I could buy you a chocolate muffin and watch you doing some cannibalism right there in public, you know…” 

“Shut up,” Colin says rolling his eyes. “First of all, I’m not hungry and I don’t want a muffin. Second…” 

“Yeah?” Bradley prompts. 

Colin puts his hands on Bradley’s shoulders, holding him steady, not letting him lose the balance and hurt himself. And then he kisses Bradley, slowly, thoroughly, licking the weak taste of maple syrup that went with the pancakes for breakfast today off the corner of his lips, catching small moans that resemble something between “whoa” and “finally”, sharing the heat of Bradley’s breath and the quick, ragged, breathtaking rhythm of his heart beating. 

The crutches fall to the ground when Bradley raises both of his hands to tug lightly at Colin’s hair and to circle lazily the prominent vertebrae at the base of Colin’s neck. The rain is still spitting down, and it’s really cold in every part of Colin’s body that doesn’t touch Bradley in some way. 

“Second,” Colin says, breaking the kiss and leaning his forehead to Bradley’s. “I think I like this walking thing too. Nothing better than a good exercise once in awhile, is it?” 

“Indeed, fairy,” Bradley says smiling. 

Colin smiles in response.

* * *

It rains two thirds of all days in London. Colin helps Bradley walk steadily on his crutches through practically every single one of them.

When the crutches are not needed any more, Colin just holds Bradley’s hand in his own. 

The end 


End file.
